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"Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket."
- George Orwell
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| Flashlight Laser | ||
| Small cylindrical device that generates a green beam of variable intensity and focal length; can illuminate or cut. |
At this point in the novel, Louis Wu and his companions are exploring the Ringworld.
| Louis aimed the implement high.
The figurine which was his target jutted from the tower's roof. It was like a modernized, surrealistic gargoyle. Louis' thumb moved, and the gargoyle glowed yellow-white. His index finger shifted, and the beam narrowed to a pencil of green light. The gargoyle sprouted a white-hot navel. |
| Technovelgy from Ringworld,
by Larry Niven. Published by Ballantine in 1970 Additional resources -
|
The flashlight-laser is like the ultimate Maglite flashlight. From simple illumination to cutting tool, the flashlight-laser does it all. Now where is that power setting on my Maglite...
This item is very reminiscent of the pencil heat ray from a 1931 novel by Ray Cummings. See also the cutteray an industrial strength laser-based cutting tool from Dune, by Frank Herbert.
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Flashlight Laser-related
news articles:
- Almost Niven's Flashlight Laser
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| Workplace Monitoring Hell, I Mean, Tool For Safe Distancing |
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'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
