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"It's hard to tell stories about critters that are not human. John W. Campbell tried it, in "Twilight," and everybody says it's a wonderful story, and nobody ever reads it twice."
- Jerry Pournelle
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| Laser Rifle | ||
| A laser weapon shaped like a rifle, carried by one man, fired at the shoulder. |
As far as I know, the earliest use of the term "laser rifle".
| “You got the time, A1 ?”
“Ten till.” Soot-barrelled [sic] laser rifles protruding through ink-dipped fronds. . . . “Think anyone’ll come?” “Naw.” |
| Technovelgy from Nine Starships Waiting,
by Roger Zelazny. Published by Fantastic in 1963 Additional resources -
|
Another very early reference to laser rifles in Gree's Hellcats (1966) by CC MacApp:
Compare to laserifle from Door to Anywhere (1966) by Poul Anderson.
Perhaps the earliest "energy weapons" were the Electric rifle from Tom Swift and the underwater gun that fired leyden ball from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Soft popping sounds began, punctuated with angry roars and shrieks of the animals, and occasionally with the splat of a laser rifle. The hunters thrashed by in the brush on both sides of him, and emerged into the small glade at the edge of which he’d chosen to hide.
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Tech news articles related to works by Roger Zelazny
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'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
