a field of force that acts as an invisible barrier
He first called Mars, the home planet of Alcantro and Fedanzo, the foremost force-field experts of three planets; and was assured in no uncertain terms that those rulers of rays were ready and anxious to follow wherever Brandon and Westfall might lead.
The force-field is a billion miles in diameter… It acts to repulse or disintegrate all matter that approaches.
‘The ordinary force field,’ explained Birnam, ‘is a feeble rarefied zone of energy extending over a hundred miles or more outside the ship.’
I was reading in the ‘Transactions’ the other day that force fields had been used in big units, and were more efficient.
The forcefield was permeable, and he ducked through.
There seemed to be no force-field, nothing modern, protecting the highly sensitive top levels of the structure.
The reason is, as you've been told, at high speeds we must have the force fields of one system or the other to shield us from interstellar gas.
It would take the most dedicated of men to confine himself behind a force field.
The four groups in the corners plunged through the forcefield at the doorway and fell down into the battleroom.
Now it’s a colossal mausoleum, but is there a force-field ramp in the place? A slideway? A gravitic lift?—No, just these steps.
A second later he smashed into the forcefield of the enemy’s door and rebounded with a crazy spin.
I ignored the force field’s threatening hum.
Ominously aglow, the molten mass dwarfed the spacecraft that toiled meters ahead of it; yet Sun Defier, harnessed by her own forcefield, was a plowhorse dragging it bit by bit from its former path…
To land, their little ship had to slide through an opening that appeared magically in the atmosphere-holding, radiation-shielding forcefield that kept the people who lived on Moon Mary safe.
A powerful force field confined Seven to the spartan, simply furnished cell.
We imprisoned Gary behind a forcefield while we cannibalized some of the station’s hardware to fix the drive.
If we're up against weapons that you need to protect a star against, I don’t think a couple of our force fields will be much use.
antedating 1931
E.E. Smith, Spacehounds of IPC
Last modified 2021-01-11 20:54:18
In the compilation of some
entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.