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"Cyberpunk worked when the Internet was in its hand-wound crystal radio phase, when you had to be a sort of hobbyist to do e-mail, and it all had a very steep learning curve. Those days are over."
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The Martians fought with weapons as yet unimagined by the people of Earth; an invisible sword of fire that destroyed all it touched.
Compare to the death-ray from The World Masters (1903) by George Griffiths, the
short-wave surgical knife from Boomerang (1953) by Eric Frank Russell, the
ray gun from The Black Star Passes (1930) by John W. Campbell, the
pencil heat ray from Brigands of the Moon (1930) by Ray Cummings, the Banning gun from Voyage 13 (1938) by Ray Cummings and the
flesh gun from The Computer Connection (1974) by Alfred Bester.
The invention of the laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) probably dates to 1958, when Schawlow and Townes (Bell researcher and consultant, respectively) published a paper called Infrared and Optical Masers.
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Science Fiction
Timeline
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'Its lines wavered, flowed, and then painfully reformed.'
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