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"I don't know why I write science fiction. The voices in my head told me to!"
- Charles Stross
 |
| Pencil Beam | ||
| A thin tube-like laser beam weapon. |
| Pitt slid into his car, and snapping on the dashboard mike, called his highest ranking superior, the South American Director. They were moving fast, now, filling up the street and surging silently toward him. They had, no doubt, identified him by his T-class clothes-white shirt and tie, gray suit, felt hat. Brief case. The shine of his black shoes. The pencil beam gleaming in the breast pocket of his coat. He undipped the gold tube and held it ready. "Emergency," he said...
The car tipped ominously; they were lifting it up on one side, trying to overturn it. Both back windows were out. A man's hand reached for the door release. Pitt burned the hand to ash with his pencil beam. The stump frantically withdrew. "I got one." "If you could scan some of them for us ..." More hands appeared. The interior of the car was sweltering; the heat drill was almost through. "I hate to do this." Pitt turned his pencil beam on his brief case until there was nothing left. Hastily, he dissolved the contents of his pockets, everything in the glove compartment, his identification papers, and finally he burned his wallet... |
| Technovelgy from Vulcan's Hammer,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Ace Books in 1956 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the pencil heat ray from Brigands of the Moon (1930), by Ray Cummings, the force-field penknife from Isaac Asimov's 1951 novel Foundation and the force pencil from Gather Darkness (1943) by Fritz Lieber.
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Science Fiction
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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...'
