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"A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content."
- Theodore Sturgeon
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| Sales Robot (Robot Salesman) | ||
| Fully automated robots giving untiring, incessant sales pitches to customers. |
Autonomous robotic salesmen - salesrobots - are the bane of consumers in this Dick classic.
| Robot-salesmen were everywhere, gesturing, pleading, shrilling. One started after him and he quickened his pace. It scurried along, chanting its pitch and trying to attract his attention, all the way up the hill to his living-unit. It didn't give up until he stooped over, snatched up a rock, and hurled it futilely. He scrambled in the house and slammed the doorlock after him. The robot hesitated, then turned and raced after a woman with an armload of packages toiling up the hill. She tried vainly to elude it, without success.
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| Technovelgy from Sales Pitch,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Future Science Fiction Magazine in 1954 Additional resources -
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The picture is taken from the original story as it appeared in the magazine.
This story has too many good quotes to pass up:
Sales robots are also in use in Stanislaw Lem's 1961 novel Return from the Stars.
Morris pushed wearily past the salesrobot, up the sidewalk toward the residential-block that contained his living-unit. The robot followed a few steps, then forgot him and hurried after another grim-faced commuter.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Sales Pitch
More Ideas
and Technology by Philip K. Dick
Tech news articles related to Sales Pitch
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
Sales Robot (Robot Salesman)-related
news articles:
- Sales Robot IRI-Millennia Opens Gates Of Hell
- Robovie Robot Gives The Sales Pitch
- ENON Upgraded To Sales Robot
- Robots In Advertising Mostly CGI, Fortunately
- Sales Robots More Persistent Than Humans
- Mall Robotic Ad Won't Leave You Alone
- OSHbot, Lowe's Robotic Shopping Assistants
- Norlin Shoe Drone Robot UAV In-Store Delivery Thing
- Sprint Wants Sales Robots
- Artificially Intelligent Poster - Advert That Writes Itself
- The Coming Hell Of ChatGPT Salesbots
- Mornine Sales Robot
| Robot Bees 3D Printed By Festo |
| DIY Robot Scorpion Crushes It |
| How To Settle An Argument Between Two Robots |
| Satyress Centaur Robot Horror Reminds Everyone Of Something |
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'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
'Henry... assumed the curious absent look of a robot talking on the TBR circuits.'
'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
