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"I was involved in a cloning project. .. to send me into outer space along with a lot of other people. Not the whole me - just a hair from my head, while I still had some. I would thus pop up in another galaxy in the distant future."
- Arthur C. Clarke
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| Subphoton Search Ray | ||
| A special ray beam that penetrates into hidden bunkers; images are caught on special film cameras. |
In the story, the WWI scenario of endless opposed trenches is replayed with sci-fi weapons technologies. I'll bet the generals of each army would like to have been able to see what the enemy had in store.
| A star shell rose silently into the night, burst soundlessly into a dazzling white illumination...
The pitiless M rays pierced Earth and steel and densest concrete as if they were so much transparent glass, illuminated every nook and cranny of the deepest hidden secrets, etched into shadowed outlines men and guns and bombproof shelters. Tiny cameras, raised swiftly aloft from the dark quiescence of the enemy lines, clicked panorama views on specially activated plates, lowered as swiftly and silently as they had reared into the blue-black sky. For a full minute, the penetrating rays flooded the landscape; then, with a little puff, the star shell dissolved into the all-embracing night. |
| Technovelgy from The Shining One,
by Nat Schachner. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1937 Additional resources -
|
Special ray beams that look inside closed rooms? More of that ridiculous, time-wasting science fiction? See LEXID Sees Through Walls To Next Apartment and LifeReader Senses The Enemy Through Wallsfor a good look at what is being done to reveal "private" spaces. They don't use "M rays," but they're still pretty cool.
Note the interesting analogy to X-ray photographic techniques; one part of the device shines penetrating rays, and the second part captures the resulting image on a photographic plate.
Schachner knew that for every science-fictional offensive technology, there is (or should be) an equal and opposite defensive technology; take a look at the vibration screen from the same story.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Shining One
More Ideas
and Technology by Nat Schachner
Tech news articles related to The Shining One
Tech news articles related to works by Nat Schachner
Subphoton Search Ray-related
news articles:
- See Through Walls With Wireless Networks
- Cell Phones To See Through Walls
- Range R Lets Police See Into Your House
- RF-Capture Lets MIT Boffins See Through Walls
- WiFi and AI Team Up To See Through Walls
| Flock Stymied By 'Adversarial Fashion' |
| China's 'Magpie Drone' Ornithopter |
| FTC: Says Ring Employees Illegally Surveilled Customers |
| Perching Ambush Drones |
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
