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"The world is really so surreal these days that it's necessary for us to blunt it somehow in order to stay sane. The artist functions to short-circuit the buffering mechanism, so that people can occasionally perceive the weirdness of things as they are."
- William Gibson
 |
| Self-Service Cafeteria | ||
| Food on demand. |
| The bright lights of a restaurant showed clear against the sunlight and he entered, slumping in a chair, and staring dully at a row of buttons to his right. He pressed several of them, then waited, wondering what was the next thing to do. Machinery whined beneath the smooth surface of the table, a panel slid aside, and a tray, loaded with steaming dishes, rose before him. As he lifted the tray the panel closed again and he smiled as he recognised an old idea in its modern form.
He had chosen a self-service cafeteria. |
| Technovelgy from The Mechanical Monarch,
by E.C. Tubb. Published by Ace Books in 1958 Additional resources -
|
As far as I know, the earliest instance of this idea in sf is found in Burroughs' 1912 novel A Princess of Mars - the automated restaurant.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Mechanical Monarch
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Tech news articles related to works by E.C. Tubb
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| ROAM Robotics Skiing Exoskeleton |
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'...they moved with the ease of dandelion puffs.'
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'...the meteor caught and halted just as a small boy catches a swift ball in his cap.'
'We have decided that it shall be but one ship... it must contain everything needed to take us through the generations.'
'You’re the robopsychologist of the plant, so you’re to study the robot itself...'
