Science Fiction Dictionary
A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

 

Birds Aren't Real - Wake Up, California! (With Bird Watching Guide)

This mysterious notice has been popping up all over our majestic West Coast.

Right!

I've been seeing these for years. Well, sort of.

Science fiction writer Roger Zelazny wrote about robotic birds in his 1980 novel Changeling:

The prototype blue-bellied, gray-backed tracer-bird with the wide-angle eye and the parabola ear followed the dragon-riders north. A series of the larger fliers followed it at well-spaced intervals, to serve as relay points for the spy broadcasts...
(Read more about Zelazny's tracer-bird)

The tracer-bird was used for surveillance.

Be sure to check out the robot bird from Philip E. High's 1968 novel Invader on My Back.

Updated 09-Dec-2023: Here's a robotic bird watching guide for mechanical ornithologists:

- Robotic Bird has USAF Flocking
  - Tiny Spyplanes May Recharge On Power Lines
  - COM-BAT Robotic 'Bat' On Order From UM
  - Robotic Hummingbird Spy
  - Surveillance Drone Bird Crashes
  - Army's New Bird-Like Surveillance UAV
  - Robot Bird Alights On Human Hand
  - SHEPHERD-MIL, A Birdlike Soaring UAV
  - Robo-Raven Flapping Wing Robot Bird
- Bat Bot Robotic Flapping-Wing Drone
- Robotic Crow Design, Like Crows, Is A Bit Creepy
- Festo BionicSwift Bird Robots Described In 1930
- Army's New Bird-Like Surveillance UAV

Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/8/2018)

Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.

| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |

Would you like to contribute a story tip? It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add it here.

Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )

Related News Stories - (" Surveillance ")

FTC: Says Ring Employees Illegally Surveilled Customers
'Then she looked up with a smile and moved closer to the camera.' - Pournelle and Niven, 1981.)

Perching Ambush Drones
'On the chest of drawers something was perched.' - Philip K. Dick, 1956.

India Ponders Always-On Smartphone Location Tracking
'It is necessary... for your own protection.' - Jack Vance, 1954.

LingYuan Vehicle Roof Drones Now Available, ala Blade Runner 2049
Accompanied by a small selection of similar ideas from science fiction.

 

Google
  Web TechNovelgy.com   

Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.

 

 

 

 

Science Fiction Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's   1950's
1960's   1970's
1980's   1990's
2000's   2010's

Current News

Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish
'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.'

Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'

Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'

Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'

I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'

Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'

Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.

'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'

Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'

ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'

Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'

Outdoor Video Screens Can Be Arbitrarily Large
The Shape of Things To Come

Infrared Contact Lenses To See In The Dark
'I can see in the dark, Case.'

What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells?
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'

Sunbird Pulsar Fusion Like Leinster's Space Tug
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'

RentAHuman App Lets AI Agents Hire Humans
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'

More SF in the News Stories

More Beyond Technovelgy science news stories

Home | Glossary | Invention Timeline | Category | New | Contact Us | FAQ | Advertise |
Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction™

Copyright© Technovelgy LLC; all rights reserved.