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"I don't know why I write science fiction. The voices in my head told me to!"
- Charles Stross
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| Emergency Repulsion Ray | ||
| A handheld means of propulsion in space. |
| THE suits were racked into small bundles. I took a second one under my arm; and in my gloved hand I held a cylinder of the emergency repulsion ray.
I saw, in those last seconds, the whole bow-peak of the dome explode outward, with a litter of human bodies and wreckage hurtled into space. I flung open the cubby slide. The air blew us out — two bloated figures, clinging together. Gravity would have brought us back, but I flung the stream of repulsive electrons from my hand-cylinder, turned them [from the] wrecked vessel ... away from. it. Slowly at first, then with accelerating speed.
 ( Emergency Repulsion Ray from 'Earth-Venus 12' by Gabriel Wilson) We clung together, bloated helmeted figures, almost weightless in the void. The great crescent limb of Earth seemed below us. The wreck of the Starlight Arrow was above our heads, half a mile or more now, and rapidly receding. |
| Technovelgy from Earth-Venus 12,
by Gabriel Wilson. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1936 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the spring-loaded broomstick from Arthur C. Clarke's 1952 story Islands in the Sky, Personal Jet Thrust from Robert Heinlein's 1948 novel Space Cadet and Electrical Tether from Garrett P. Serviss' 1898 story Edison's Conquest of Mars.
Compare also to the reaction pistol from Gordon A. Giles Diamond Planetoid (1937), the metal solvent ray thrower from Lost Rocket (1941) by Manly Wade Wellman, the propulsion gun from Venus Mines, Incorporated (1931) by Nat Schachner (w. AL Zagat) and the Pistol 'Rocket' (1931) from Buck Rogers: 2430 AD (1931) by Nowlan and Calkin.
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| Tumblin' Tumbleweed Rovers To Eplore Mars |
| Tentacled Robot Captures Space Debris |
| Reflect Orbital Sunlight On Demand |
| Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space |
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'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
