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"Science fiction operates a little bit like science itself, in principle. You've got thousands of people exploring ideas, putting forth their own hypotheses. Most of them are dead wrong; a few stand the test of time; everything looks kind of quaint in hind"
- Peter Watts
 |
| Robomule | ||
| The robotic equivalent of a mule. |
| ...he might have paid more attention to his ploughing... and would have driven his furrow to the far side of the hill before the seductive music sounded along the road. But he did hear it and dropped the handles of the plough that was plugged into the robomule, turned and gaped. |
| Technovelgy from Bill the Galactic Hero,
by Harry Harrison. Published by Unknown in 1965 Additional resources -
|
You might compare the robomule to the more fully-featured robass from Anthony Boucher's 1951 story The Quest for Saint Aquin, as well as the more nimble dope mule from Bruce Sterling's 1994 novel Heavy Weather.
Compare to the automatic cultivators from Piracy Preferred (1930) by John W. Campbell, the conscious farm machines from The Hidden Colony (1935) by Otfrid von Hanstein, the robot farmer from The Turning Wheel (1954) by Philip K. Dick, the field minder from Who Can Replace A Man (1963) by Brian Aldiss, the self-guided tractor from At the Bottom of a Hole (1966) by Larry Niven, the robot crab from Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson and the agricultural robot pest controller from Runaway (1985) by Michael Crichton.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Bill the Galactic Hero
More Ideas
and Technology by Harry Harrison
Tech news articles related to Bill the Galactic Hero
Tech news articles related to works by Harry Harrison
Robomule-related
news articles:
- Kinze Autonomy Project's Autonomous Tractors
- Autonomous Tractor Harvest-Ready
| US Army IBEX Exoskeleton Walks Troops Out Of Danger |
| Terraformer Industries Make Methane |
| Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction |
| Infrared Contact Lenses To See In The Dark |
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'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
