N-ray

With the descent of darkness, the place came alive with the violet-tinged N-ray illumination from large glass globes.

Asimov's Science Fiction 2004

So many had died in that holocaust, both Europeans and Arabs, before the soldiers of the Empire with their fearsome N-ray weapons and N-ray-powered armored vehicles had managed to restore order.

Asimov's Science Fiction 2004

At the heart of the N-ray generator was an essential nest of prisms and lenses.

Asimov's Science Fiction 2004

There was a large military installation on the border with Niger, where N-ray research deemed too hazardous to be permitted in the homeland took place.

Asimov's Science Fiction 2004

When hostilities commenced in June of 1914, the French military had already secretly been embarked on a program of construction of N-ray weapons for some time.

Asimov's Science Fiction 2004

N-ray construction machinery was busy slicing through the earth to fashion Algiers's first Metro line, running from Ain Allah through downtown and on to Ain Naadja.

Asimov's Science Fiction 2004

(Listening to the complaints of merchants whose trade was pre-emptively hurt in advance of any unlawful gatherings was infinitely preferable to answering the questions of cynical reporters concerning the corpses of demonstrators charred to cinders by the N-ray cannons of the police.)

Asimov's Science Fiction 2004

Quebec, Cuba, Mexico, the Sandwich Islands, all of them under French control and bristling with N-ray armaments.

Asimov's Science Fiction 2004

At one point the tracks bellied outward to accommodate a pedestaled statue of Professor Blondlot, holding aloft the first crude N-ray generator.

Asimov's Science Fiction 2004

In chronological order, here's to the losers: The N-ray (1903): At a time of great upheaval in the physical sciences, French physicist Rene Prosper Blondlot announces the discovery of "N-rays," a form of radiation he calls even more important than X-rays, discovered just a few years earlier.

A Century of Spectacular Failure 1999