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"If we're going to be consistent and advocate freedom of speech we have to advocate freedom of encrypted speech too. The genie is out of the bottle, cryptologically."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Spider-Vehicle | ||
| A multi-legged vehicle shaped like a spider, that is piloted by a person. |
I can't think of an earlier description of a vehicle that is laboriously piloted by a person. The author spends a lot of time letting you know how much work it is on uneven ground.
| The sounds from the other side of the mound went on uninterrupted — a clangor of metal, the prolonged shrilling of a cutting-torch, where evidently they were at work breaking up the smashed spider-vehicle...
THE spider-vehicle lurched and swayed, even its marvelous system of shock-absorbers protesting as it climbed steeply, straddling upward from rock to rock.
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| Technovelgy from World of the Drone,
by Robert Abernathy. Published by Imagination in 1955 Additional resources -
|
The spider vehicle was able to operate somewhat on its own:
...The spider careened onward, no hand at its controls. It hit the line of crawling little machines coming from underground; it knocked one spinning end over end, and stepped squarely on another, stamping it flat. It recovered its balance amazingly, and loped on, even though one leg was buckling beneath it —
Compare to the metallic spider from War of the Worlds (1898) by HG Wells and the spider robot from The Mystery of Element 117 (1949) by Milton K. Smith, which appear to be autonomous.
See also the ships with legs from Buck Rogers, 2430 AD (1929) by Philip Nowlan, the the robass from The Quest for Saint Aquin (1951) by Anthony Boucher and the the centipede-machine from Monsters of Mars (1931) by Edmond Hamilton, the centipede from Killing Titan (2015) by Greg Bear and the hammock crutches from Liberation of Earth (1952) by William Tenn.
Dwprn wrenched open the cabin door with one hand. His other arm circled Qanya's waist, dragged her away from the controls. She cried in uncomprehending shock as he swung her before him into the open doorway. They swayed there, high above the speeding ground, wind whipping at them as the spider pounded blindly on...
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| Orb Nomad Zero-Emission Electric Aircraft |
| The Amazing Lightfoot Electric Scooter With Solar Assist |
| Leader-Follower Autonomous Vehicle Technology |
| Inmotion Electric Unicycle In Combat |
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'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'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.'
