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"The permanent government now is the anchorpeople. They don't get elected, and year after year they're responding emotionally to this or that."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 |
| Needle-Ray | ||
| Very thin beam of destruction. |
This is an early version of this idea.
| He spun a couple of wheels briefly, pressed a switch, and from the Violet's heaviest needle-ray projector there flashed out against the prow of the scout patrol a pencil of incredibly condensed destruction. |
| Technovelgy from Skylark of Valeron,
by E.E. 'Doc' Smith. Published by Astounding in 1934 Additional resources -
|
Used just a few years later by Nat Schachner in Reverse Universe (1936):
Talbot’s hand darted down toward his belt where his needle ray dangled, stopped with a jerk. A half dozen projectors were trained on him, ready to blast him out of existence.
They came on with a rush, filling the tiny conning tower with their hulking, unwashed bodies. Flame projectors snouted in their grubby fingers — weapons that should have been under seal in the arms compartment — and hatred glared from their half-mad eyes.
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Tech news articles related to Skylark of Valeron
Tech news articles related to works by E.E. 'Doc' Smith
| Sleeper Drones Lie in Wait |
| Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade |
| Moscow Attacked By Hundreds Of Drones |
| China's Handheld Electromagnetic Gun |
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'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...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
