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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl

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.

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
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