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"Fuzzy logic tries to get machines to think like people do, with inexact fuzzy terms."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Flame Disintegrator | ||
| Ravening flames from a hand-held device. |
| The Martian legions policed the spaceways ; their flame disintegrators were efficient deterrents to malcontents from Mercury to the asteroids. |
| Technovelgy from The Eternal Wanderer,
by Nat Schachner. Published by 1936 in Astounding Additional resources -
|
See the flame disintegrator in use against a living being:
Before the horrified gaze of the onlookers, a torso with uplifted hand, cleanly dissociated, wabbled in mid-air, and fell with a splintering crash to the smooth, stony floor. Two legs, unconnected, solitary, jerked forward with acquired momentum, to slide to a grisly, toppling fall ten rods farther.
A flame seared out from a Martian gun. It leaped across the intervening space, contacted the plunging Mer- cutian. It caught him square in the middle. Even as his fist was raised to batter at the unprotected head of the Martian leader, there was a crackle, a hiss, and — there was nothingness. Molecules, atoms, electrons, protons — of flesh, of bone, of tissue — had disintegrated into primal, inchoate, invisible stuff.
(Flame disintegrator from 'The Eternal Wanderer')
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
