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"The best fuzzy rules, the best knowledge, deal with the turning points of the system. If a race-car driver teaches you how to drive, you don't need him to show you how to drive on the straightaway. It's how he handles the curves that matters."
- Bart Kosko

Tubular Field of Force  
  Can pull an object through space.  

This is Williamson's version of a tractor beam.

"...Before we had time to repeat the signal, the Invincible was caught by some tremendous, unseen force. The geodynes were helpless against it. Like a pebble on a string, we were drawn toward that hostile craft."

"Can you conceive of an invisible field of energy, Bob - a tubular field of force, a mathematician might call it - strong enough to drag the Invincible against her fighting geodynes, five thousand miles in five minutes? That's what happened."

Technovelgy from The Cometeers, by Jack Williamson.
Published by Street and Smith in 1936
Additional resources -

The earliest reference to what most sf fans call a tractor beam is the attractive ray from a 1928 novel by Edmund Hamilton. The phrase "Tractor beam" was originated by E.E. "Doc" Smith in 1931.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Cometeers
  More Ideas and Technology by Jack Williamson
  Tech news articles related to The Cometeers
  Tech news articles related to works by Jack Williamson

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