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"Tokyo homeless people reiterate the whole nature of living in Tokyo in cardboard boxes, they're only slightly smaller than Tokyo apartments, and they have almost as many consumer goods. It's a nightmare of boxes within boxes."
- William Gibson

Smother-Charge  
  Molecularly-gimmicked explosive.  

I unrolled the black ball, opening it out into a seamless glove, a dollop of something resembling moist putty stuck to its palm...

If I were to slap a metal surface with my left hand, the substance would adhere there, coming free of the glove. Two seconds later it would explode, and the force of the explosion would be directed in against the surface. Newton would claim his own by way of right-angled redistributions of the reaction, hopefully tearing lateral hell out of the contact surface. A smother-charge it was called, and its possession came under concealed-weapons and possession-of-burglary tools statutes in most places. The molecularly gimmicked goo, I decided, was great stuff. It was just the delivery system that left more to be desired.

Technovelgy from My Name is Legion, by Roger Zelazny.
Published by Del Rey in 1976
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