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"Everything starts as somebody's daydream. And, when you're daydreaming, it is science fiction. It's when you start work out how you put it together, true science fiction becomes real science."
- Larry Niven
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| Metal Solvent Ray Thrower | ||
| Acts like a flame thrower in space. |
He has an unexpected use for this device.
| Here was something: A metal solvent ray thrower, big and powerful enough for his purposes. It was as large as a small cannon, but easy to handle without the gravity pull that the ship once had...
Away he soared into the starry blackness, floating outward like a kite. He traveled for many yards, until he came to the end of the cable with ever so gentle a jerk... He pointed the ray thrower in the direction that the wreck was traveling in and touched the trigger switch. Fire gushed into the dark, fire full of destructive power - and motive power. Like a rocket, the thrower recoiled and hurled backward.
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| Technovelgy from Lost Rocket,
by Manly Wade Wellman. Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1941 Additional resources -
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Compare to the emergency repulsion ray from Earth-Venus 12 (1936) by Gabriel Wilson, the reaction pistol from Gordon A. Giles Diamond Planetoid (1937), the propulsion gun from Venus Mines, Incorporated (1931) by Nat Schachner (w. AL Zagat) and the Pistol 'Rocket' (1931) from Buck Rogers: 2430 AD (1931) by Nowlan and Calkin.
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| Beautiful Visualization of Dawn Spacecraft |
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| Reflect Orbital Sunlight On Demand |
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'... completely forgetting the ship at sight of the awesome figure and great head of the giant Gaut...'
'So, Ender, we will now begin your education.'
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
