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"It is change ... that is the dominant factor in society today... the world as it will be. This means that ... every man must take on a science fictional way of thinking.""
- Isaac Asimov

Security Restraint Field  
  A force field that restricts personal movement.  

This seems to beat just handcuffing a guy in the back seat of a police car.

Outside they had a manually-operated car larger than the robot cabs. The second guard slipped into the driver's seat; the other urged Don into the passenger compartment. There he sat down and started to turn - and found that he could not. He was unable even to raise his hands. Any attempt to move, to do anything other than sit and breathe, felt like struggling against the weight of too many blankets. "Take it easy," the guard advised. "You can pull a ligament fighting that field. And it does not do any good."

Don had to prove to himself that the man was right. Whatever the invisible bonds were, the harder he strained against them the tighter they bound him. On the other hand when he relaxed and rested he could not even feel them.

Technovelgy from Between Planets, by Robert Heinlein.
Published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1951
Additional resources -

This is similar to the tanglefoot field from The Star Beast.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Between Planets
  More Ideas and Technology by Robert Heinlein
  Tech news articles related to Between Planets
  Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein

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Science Fiction in the News

Robotic Barber Programmed With a Number of Styles
'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'

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'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'

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'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'

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'About time you got here,' the astronaut said.

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'...using a neutralizing electronic impulse.'

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'...the Hole is something like a vortex or a whirlpool?'

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'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'

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