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"[Science fiction] is the one literary medium left in which we have a free hand. We can do any damn thing we please."
- Alfred Bester
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| AM-280 Needle Rifle | ||
| Device shoots a stream of steel needles. |
Very handy when fighting alien caterpillars the size of buses.
| "The rifle was an AM-280 with tunable laser sight. The output was set high in the UV and I had to wear an EV-helmet with retinal-focused eyepieces to see the beam. It spat high-velocity bursts of eighteen-grain needles, as many as three thousand per minute. You pointed the beam at your target and pulled the trigger. The needle burst would tear holes in a steel door. They said you could slice a man in half with a 280. I didn’t want to try." |
| Technovelgy from A Matter For Men,
by David Gerrold. Published by Simon and Schuster in 1983 Additional resources -
|
This is probably a deliberate upgrade to a weapon like this one - the AM-180.
Speaking of giant alien caterpillars, I ran across this creature in a 1963 edition of Amazing Stories:
(QUINQUEPEDALIAN by Piers Anthony)
Thanks to Odon for the quote and the video.
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