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"You have to budget the number of fuzzy rules you use to control a system. It turns out, you can state the optimality principle in three words: 'patch the bumps.'"
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Vapor Cloud | ||
| Corrosive gas destroys ships. |
| Above them in the sky the cruiser appeared, sweeping down over the Adharan. From the cruiser a blue^white cloud shot, drilled out by pressure jets directly at the black Adharan ship. The cloud reached the parked freighter. It billowed around it, fusing into it.
The surface of the Adharan hull glowed briefly. It began to fall in, eaten away. Corroded. The Terran cruiser swept past, completing its run. It disappeared into the sky. ' From the Adharan ship figures were emerging, jumping out onto the ground. The figures sprang in all directions, long-legged, leaping wildly around. Most of the figures hopped excitedly up onto their ship, dragging hoses and equipment, working frantically, disappearing into the vapor cloud. "They're spraying." More Adharans appeared, leaping frantically up and down, onto their ship, onto the ground, some this way, others in no particular direction at all. "Like when you step on an ant hill," Barnes murmured. The hull of the Adharan ship was covered with clinging Adharans, spraying desperately, trying to halt the corrosive action of the vapor. |
| Technovelgy from The Cosmic Poachers,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Imagination in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Compare to corrosite gas from The Machine That Thought (1939) by William Callahan.
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'...support the interior human structure against Jupiter’s pull.'
'Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray...'
'The German chemists have discovered how to supply the needed elements in compact, undiluted form...'
'Compounds devised by the biochemists for the rapid building of bone...'
'The car faltered as the external command came to brake...'
'It is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized...'
'The greatest problem of all was the elimination of the human element of braking together with its inevitable time lag.'
