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"A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Tractor Beam | ||
| A force field used to pull objects. |
Read an early example of this specialized kind of force field. This is the first instance of the term "tractor beam."
| "We'll carry off the pieces of that ship, too, Quince—we may be able to get a lot of pointers from it," and Brandon swung mighty tractor beams upon the severed halves of the Jovian vessel, then extended a couple of smaller rays to meet the two little figures racing across the smooth green meadow toward the Sirius. |
| Technovelgy from Spacehounds of IPC,
by E.E. 'Doc' Smith. Published by Amazing Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
The same device is used in Triplanetary:
"What do you make of that, Costigan?" asked the captain. "Tractor beams?"
"Apparently. They've got something like that. They're taking us somewhere fast. I'll go get a couple of Standishes, and another suit of armor - we'd better dig in," - and soon the small room became a veritable fortress...
Although Smith certainly won the naming convention, Edmond Hamilton wrote about essentially the same thing three years earlier in Crashing Suns - the attractive ray.
Other examples of force fields in sf include the barrier force field fence from Robert Heinlein's 1940 novella Coventry and the force-field penknife from Isaac Asimov's 1951 novel Foundation (probably the basis for George Lucas' light saber from Star Wars).
As they entered their retreat they felt their weight begin to increase. more and more force was applied to the helpless liner until it was moving at normal acceleration.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Spacehounds of IPC
More Ideas
and Technology by E.E. 'Doc' Smith
Tech news articles related to Spacehounds of IPC
Tech news articles related to works by E.E. 'Doc' Smith
Tractor Beam-related
news articles:
- Gravity Tractor Research By British Scientists
- Tractor Beam Works Over Longer Distances
- Physicists Build Repulsor / Tractor Beam
- Tractor Beams? They're Working On It
| Will Space Stations Have Large Interior Spaces Again? |
| Reflect Orbital Offers 'Sunlight on Demand' And Light Pollution |
| Chrysalis Generation Ship to Alpha Centauri |
| The First Space Warship For Space Force |
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'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain...'
'The observation vehicle was of that peculiar variety used in conveying a large number of people across rough terrain.'
'The real border was defended by... a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats.'
'I ... set my automatic astronomical instruments to searching for a habitable planet.'
'...haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?'
