Judah wrote:
"cjcampbell" wrote in
oups.com:


But back to light sabers. Larry Niven in his stories posited a
"variable sword." This is actually a wire only one molecule thick (and
therefore extremely sharp) coiled in the handle of a flashlight-like
device. The wire can be extended out any length up to about four feet.
It is held straight and rigid by a force field that affects only the
wire -- the same type of force field that enables spaceships to crash
into planets without harm to the occupants (although they may be buried
beneath tons of rock). If this was a glowing force field, it would look
just like a light saber. So you could say that Lucas was just copying
something that Larry Niven had already invented.


Larry Niven? Wasn't he in the Pink Panther? The Pink Panther didn't have a
light sabre!

That was David Niven. And, while I haven't looked, I would be surprised
if the Pink Panther has never had a light sabre. Larry Niven wrote a
series of novels called the Known Space novels. One of the things
common to all these novels is the stasis field, a kind of force field
in which time ceases to exist. Thus, it does not keep other objects out
by means of a wall of energy, but because time does not pass within the
forcefield, anything starting to enter the stasis field is frozen by
time and pushed away.

Larry Niven also was one of the creators of The Green Lantern.