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"For the sciences, the way to change science's perception of things is to wait until all the old farts have died off."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Bolt Anti-Grav | ||
| This device produces a torus-shaped discharge that causes weightlessness. |
| “Bolt anti," she whispered as her breath began to come back. "Not much good, but best I could do. Government's cracked down on all anti sales since the geeksters began using them." She fumbled with the end of her shari and produced a flat, blunt object like an old-fashioned air automatic. She handed it to George.”
He examined it distrustfully. He had always considered the bolt anti-grav the most unreliable of anti-gravitic devices. The anti-gravs in commercial use (most strictly supervised, since geeksters and raubsters had discovered their value in mass levitation of stolen goods) were perfectly safe. But the bolt anti-grav worked on a different principle. Its "doughnut" discharge produced what non-material physicists called a reversed stasis of the object which it hit. The object in consequence became weightless. The difficulty was that there was no practical way of estimating in advance when the stasis would return to normal and the object acquire weight again. And, since stasis reversal was potentially harmful to living tissue, all bolt antis had built-in governors preventing their discharge too frequently. Too dangerous for a children's toy, too ineffective for genuine use, the bolt anti was the perfect example of ingrown gadgetry. |
| Technovelgy from Sacred Martian Pig (Idris' Pig),
by Margaret St. Clair. Published by Startling Stories in 1949 Additional resources -
|
This is how it feels when it strikes you:
Compare to Repellor Anti-Gravity Rays from Armageddon: 2419 A.D. (1928) by Philip Frances Nowlan.
The doughnut hit him amidships just as he jumped. It spread over him in a kind of shudder, a sensation like an intense interior tickling, not painful, but highly disagreeable. Then he was soaring over the roof in a long, long arc...
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'... the expressionless face before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature that could be set for five times the strength of a human being.'
'Waldo put his arms into the primary pair before him; all three pairs, including the secondary pair mounted before the machine, came to life.'
'... the glittering little rocket bolted to the black iron behind him.'
'The slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
'The operation that had transformed half his body... had located the control switchboard in his teeth.'
