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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
 |
| Mercy Rifle | ||
| Device fired slivers of anesthetic as darts. |
| The goggled figure in front of the camp tent was cleaning a mercy rifle. By the time we were out of the car, he had closed it up and loaded it with inch-long slivers of anesthetic chemical. The slivers could be fired individually or in one-second bursts of twenty, and they dissolved instantly in anything that resembled blood. One type of sliver would usually fit all the lifeforms on a given world. |
| From Grendel,
by Larry Niven. Published by Ballantine in 1968 Additional resources -
|
Compare this idea to the needle pipe from the 1928 novel Beyond the Stars by Ray Cummings.
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