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"I've got this beautiful panoramic three-dimensional painting of Mars based on Martian photos. It's 30 feet wide. You can pick out every pebble on the Martian landscape. And who'd have dreamed you could do that?"
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Atom-Gun | ||
| A handheld device that sprays atomic fire. |
When visiting the satellites of our solar system, defensive weapons are a necessity.
| Crane sighted at one of the ocher creatures in the lead, pressed the firing button of his atom-gun, saw the Greenie fall as the thin, crashing bolt of atomic fire streaked and struck...
The atom-guns began to crackle again, this time in irregular rhythm... He fired. The streak of fire from his weapon brought a distant scream of agony. |
| Technovelgy from Revolt on the Tenth World,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Amazing Stories in 1940 Additional resources -
|
Hamilton uses the same phrase (with illustrations) in The Face of the Deep (1942):
The words died on his lips as he burst out into the corridor. A mass of gray-clad convict were pouring into tire fore end of tire passage, In their front rank was Moremos, the Venusian murderer, grasping an atom-gun.
Of course, there are a great many variations on the blaster idea (first mentioned in When the Green Star Waned (1925) by Nictzin Dyalhis); consider the annihilator beam from The Conquest of Gola (1931) by L.F. Stone, the de-atomizer) and the >disintegrator from Garrett P. Serviss' 1898 novel Edison's Conquest of Mars.
"Something's wrong! If the prisoners --"
(Atom Gun from 'The Face of the Deep' by Edmond Hamilton)
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'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
