Gadgets

The post, "Weapons Technology in the Technic Civilization Stories" by Johan Ortiz, was published today but its date of publication has been changed to 15 January so that it will stay at the top of the blog for a week with newer posts like this one appearing below it. Thus, I refer to Johan's article "before" its arrival but blog readers can cope with temporal displacements which are one of the things that we talk about.

Johan's article reminded me of:

James Blish (writing as William Atheling , Jr.), "THINGS STILL TO COME: Gadgetry and Prediction [1964]" IN William Atheling Jr., More Issues at Hand, critical studies in contemporary science fiction, edited and with an introduction by James Blish (Advent: Publishers, Inc., Chicago, 1970), pp. 41-50.

Atheling/Blish lists gadgets that had been in sf, had not been realized yet and indeed had almost disappeared from the stories:

the field drive;
anti-gravity;
the energy screen as a sub-species of the first two;
rays as a natural step from screens (here Blish refers to Poul Anderson as I will detail in a subsequent post);
thus, weapons including sidearms including blasters but also -

protein-coagulating rays,
electric shock rays,
poison rays,
insanity-inducing rays,
convulsion-inducing rays,
melting rays,
heat rays (which had come as laser guns)
heterodyning rays, also counting as one kind of disintegrator;

tractor beams;
pressor beams;
flying belts;
invisibility.

It will be seen that the subject matter of Blish's article overlaps with that of Johan's.