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"This category [science fiction] excludes rocket ships that make U-turns, serpent men of Neptune that lust after human maidens, and stories by authors who flunked their Boy Scout merit badge tests in descriptive astronomy."
- Robert Heinlein

Boulder  
  A device that homed in on a person's brain wave pattern; a very specific assassination device.  

The weapon which Herb Lackmore had been provided with contained a costly replica of the encephalic brainwave pattern of James Briskin. He needed merely to place the device within a few miles of Briskin, screw in the handle, and then, with a switch, detonate it.

It was a mechanism, he decided, which provided little if any personal satisfaction.

Technovelgy from Cantata 140, by Philip K. Dick.
Published by Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1964
Additional resources -

This device is a perfect example of needle-eyeification, a concept that Dick elucidates with gusto in his 1965 novel The Zap Gun.

Compare this device to the mechanical cobra from Roger Zelazny's 1967 masterpiece Lord of Light

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Cantata 140
  More Ideas and Technology by Philip K. Dick
  Tech news articles related to Cantata 140
  Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick

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