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"If we're going to be consistent and advocate freedom of speech we have to advocate freedom of encrypted speech too. The genie is out of the bottle, cryptologically."
- Neal Stephenson

Slow Pellet Stunner  
  A projectile device that throws darts in a manner calculated to get past a force shield.  

In the Dune universe, troops generally wear a personal force field that will repel any fast-moving object. Go slow, however, and you just might get through.

A rain of blue uniforms came over the cliff wall in front of him, falling in low-suspensor slowness. In the flashing instant, Hawat had time to see that they were Sardaukar, hard faces set in battle frenzy, that they were unshielded and each carried a knife in one hand, a stunner in the other. A thrown knife caught Hawat's Fremen companion in the throat, hurting him backward, twisting face down. Hawat had only time to draw his own knife before blackness of a stunner projectile felled him...

....

With his mother beside him, Paul leaped for the door, seeing Idaho blocking the passage, his blood-pitted eyes there visible through a shield blur, claw hands beyond him, arcs of steel chopping futilely at the shield. There was the orange fire-mouth of a stunner repelled by the shield. Idaho's blades were through it all, flick-flicking, red dripping from them.

Technovelgy from Dune, by Frank Herbert.
Published by Putnam in 1965
Additional resources -

In the glossary at the end of Dune, stunners are described as shooting "poison- or drug-tipped darts." However, in the two passages quoted above, it seems unlikely that either of these would result in an orange-tinged explosion. You might speculate that the projectiles carry an electrical charge.

Thanks to MrX_TLO for suggesting this item.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Dune
  More Ideas and Technology by Frank Herbert
  Tech news articles related to Dune
  Tech news articles related to works by Frank Herbert

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