DEATH RAYS

DEATH RAYS
   Rays that could kill, whether by heat or by disintegration, were the staple WEAPONS of pulp sf in the 1920s and 1930s and became a central item of sf TERMINOLOGY. At about the time death rays became old-fashioned in sf, scientists in the real world saw fit to invent the laser, thus retroactively justifying one of sf's fantasies. The death ray always, however, had a basis in historical fact. After the well publicized discoveries of X-rays by Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen (1845-1923) in 1895 and of radioactive emissions by Antoine Henri Becquerel (1852-1908) - he too called them rays - in 1896, the word "ray" entered the popular imagination. One of the earliest literary examples is the "heat ray" used by the Martians in H.G. WELLS's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1898).
   PN

Science Fiction and Fantasy Encyclopedia. . 2011.

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