heat ray n.

Only the fact that a hummock of heathery sand intercepted the lower part of the Heat Ray saved them.

The heat ray was, even when working at full capacity, quite ineffective against the ten-man ships, when produced by the small mechanism of the Nigrian one-man ships, but the great rays from the monster interstellar liners were fatal.

With our heat-rays and other weapons we might wipe out the revolutionists in time; but the plagues they have brought in are a different problem.

There were two million Scientists and over five hundred thousand metal men. Atomic Physicist SQ132 had developed the heat ray twelve years before. In thirty-four days of battle every woman, child, and man other than the Scientists died. At last Science had triumphed.

‘Disintegraters, heat-rays, bombs of every type. And impenetrable shields of energy, massive and portable. What more do I need?’

Definitely a heat ray of some sort.

He couldn’t believe that there had been time enough for any group to invent a heat-ray, if such a thing could exist. Yet nothing else would explain the two sudden bursts of flame he had seen.

A huge arm comes through the window and gropes around until the leader burns it off with his heat-ray gun and hears the monster shamble off in the darkness.

The Martians are conquering the earth with their heat-rays and other super-weapons when they succumb to Terran bacteria.

A Ciribian heat ray…They won’t use it unless they’re attacked.

But, as any thoughtful consumer of today’s media knows, it is the frame in which the facts are considered, rather than the facts themselves, that determines their emotional content and the impression the viewer carries away. Rather than ‘Mad Genius Threatens Crowd with Heat Ray,’ for example, what would you think if you read the headline ‘Philanthropic Inventor Staves Off Global Destruction’?