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"[Science fiction is ] That branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance upon human beings."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Brain Placed In Metal Body | ||
| A robotic body with a support system for a connected organic brain. |
This is a very early expression of this idea.
| They begin to say to themselves in effect - 'It is our brain, our intelligence, that is the vital part of us, we would be rid of this handicap of the body forever.'
With this idea in mind, their scientists worked together and finally produced a body of metal, a body machine which was driven by atomic force, like all of their machines, and which needed only the slight, occasional care which is given to any machine. Inside that body had been arranged an electrical nerve-system, the controls of which led up into the square metal head. In that head, also, have been placed a small super-radio by which silent, constant communication could be had from metal body to metal body. Nerves, sense organs, muscle, they were all there, and all were artificial, in organic. The metal body lacked only a brain. It was then that one of their scientists performed his greatest achievement, and brought success to their plan. From the living body of one of their number he removed the living brain, as their consummate art in Super-surgery enabled him to do. This living brain was then placed within a specially-prepared brain chamber of a metal body, inside its cubicle head. 
When the brain is finally placed in its platinum chamber, the surgeon carefully connect the nerve ends of the brains with the electrical nerve connections of the metal body. Then an apparent miracle is accomplished. The body lives, it can move, and can walk. And that intelligence is now forever free from the demands of it's former body of flesh, residing as it does now in the untiring metal body which requires neither food nor sleep. |
| Technovelgy from The Comet Doom,
by Edmond Hamilton. Published by Amazing Stories in 1929 Additional resources -
|
Jack Williamson had lots of fun with this idea in his 1932 classic story The Pygmy Planet:
Floating in the brilliant violet liquid that filled the crystal tube was a gray mass, wrinkled and corrugated. This was divided by deep clefts into right and left hemispheres, which, in turn were separated into larger upper and smaller lower segments. White filaments ran through the violet liquid from its base toward the three rings or bands of green metal that encircled the cylinder.
In an instant, Larry realized that the gray mass was a human brain. The larger, upper part the cerebrum, the smaller mass at the back the cerebellum. And the white filaments were nerves, by means of which this brain controlled its astounding, mechanical body!
A brain in a machine!
Hamilton reused this idea in The Face of the Deep (1942):
The Brain, third of the Futuremen, was by far the strangest. Yet he had been an ordinary human, once. He had been Simon Wright, brilliant, aging Earth scientist. Dying of an incurable ailment, Wright's living brain had been removed from his human body and transferred into a special serum case in which it still lived, thought and acted. The Brain now resembled a square box of transparent metal. Upon one face of it were his protruding lenslike eyes and microphonic ears and speech apparatus. From compact generators inside the case jetted the magnetic tractorbeams that enabled the Brain to glide swiftly through the air and to handle objects and tools.
Its body, or its central part, was a tube of transparent crystal; an upright cylinder, rounded at upper and lower ends. It was nearly a foot in diameter, and four feet long. It seemed filled with a luminous, purple liquid...
(The brain in a machine from 'The Pygmy Planet' by Jack Williamson)
(The Brain from 'The Face of the Deep' by Edmond Hamilton)
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and Technology from The Comet Doom
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Tech news articles related to The Comet Doom
Tech news articles related to works by Edmond Hamilton
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'Space-sickness is one of the most unpleasant sensations that a human being can experience. Not all are subject to it...'
'...I saw a nice black heavy-looking cloud sailing by just now, and I can get the electrical machine out in five minutes to draw it down.'
'From a distance it could resolve the cosmic rays reflected from various substances.'
'The answer to the dumb student's prayer.'
'He had travelled the space-lanes of the solar system for the greater part of his life...'
'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
