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"Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| Paralysis Ray | ||
| A special ray that produces paralysis. |
This is a very early use of this concept.
| "I have invented a weapon, Miss Carlyle, that will render the monster on Satellite Five helpless!" he proclaimed dramatically. "A paralysis ray!"
 (Paralysis Ray from 'Satellite Five' by Arthur K. Barnes) Gerry was dubious. She had seen abortive attempts at paralysis rays before. "What's it's principle?" she asked. "The transmission of a nerve impulse along the nerve fiber is provided by local electrical currents within the fiber itself... Passage over the junction point between cells is effected by a chemical transmitter, acetylcholine... Tommy Strike stirred. "Old stuff, Doc. Sir Henry Dale and Professor Otto Loewi won the Nobel Prize for that discovery seventy years ago. Nineteen thirty-six, wasn't it?" Lunde now exposed the interior of the leaden colored box... The interior showed a bewildering array of tubes and coils, all in miniature... The lens was shutterlike, similar to a camera lens... "This, in effect," went on Professor Lunde in lecture style, "produces a neutron stream... And the penetrating neutron blast destroys the acetylcholine by adding to its atomic structure, thus making it so extremely unstable that it breaks itself up at once." |
| Technovelgy from Satellite Five,
by Arthur K. Barnes. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1938 Additional resources -
|
Compare this to Heinlein's paralysis bomb from Methuselah's Children several years later, the paralyzing eye from L. Sprague de Camp's The Best Laid Scheme (1941), the paralyzing ray from Ray Cumming's Blood of the Moon (1936), the paralyzing cone from The Atomic Conquerors by Edmond Hamilton (1927) and the para-beam from EC Tubbs' Mechanical Monarch (1958).
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Satellite Five
More Ideas
and Technology by Arthur K. Barnes
Tech news articles related to Satellite Five
Tech news articles related to works by Arthur K. Barnes
Paralysis Ray-related
news articles:
- Paralysis Ray Uses Photocontrolled Molecular Switch
- US Special Ops Wants Paralysis Device
| Sleeper Drones Lie in Wait |
| Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade |
| Moscow Attacked By Hundreds Of Drones |
| China's Handheld Electromagnetic Gun |
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
