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"If you have a gut response to a story, you are not responding to something new ..you are really responding to a story you were told when you were six or seven…"
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![]() In this short story, a strange new fortress threatens; it is impossible for planes to approach. What sort of device could be used to penetrate its defenses?
The amazing Scarab also has the ability to deliver, via a "sting," a minute quantity of a powerful soporific agent to put evildoers quickly to sleep.
The Scarab could fly thousands of feet high into the sky; it was powered by "wireless power plants".
Note that the Scarab is not an autonomous robot; it is remote-controlled at all times. This story demonstrates the good humor of Gallun; the user of the Scarab describes having fun picking fights with beetles and other small creatures.
The wizened little man leaned back
wearily and triumphantly in his wheel
chair. He drew his hands away from
the complicated maze of levers and buttons before him. Those levers and buttons were the controls of the distant
Scarab. By means of them, through a
system of radio impulses, the intricate
and tiny robot could be guided and directed. That radiovision screen there,
still portraying a wild though satisfying
view, pictured what the Scarab’s eyes
beheld. That speaker, supported in a
mahogany box, reproduced the sounds
heard by the Scarab’s microphonic ears.
The only part about the Scarab that seems unattainable today is its power source; wireless, broadcast power, which was all the rage in the Twenties and Thirties.
Compare to the infiltrators from Vulcan's Hammer (1960) by Philip K. Dick, the commercial fly from The Simulacra (1964) by Philip K. Dick and the blurbflies from Nymphomation (2000) by Jeff Noon. Compare also to the housefly monitor from Lies, Inc. (1964) by Philip K. Dick - not a robot but a controllable organic insect with attached surveillance technology.
See also the raytron apparatus from Beyond the Stars (1928) by Ray Cummings, the artificial eye drone from Glimpse (1938) by Manly Wade Wellman, eyes from This Moment of the Storm (1966) by Roger Zelazny, the Ultraminiature Spy-Circuit from The Unknown (1972) by Christopher Anvil, copseyes from Cloak of Anarchy (1972) by Larry Niven, the sky ball from A Day For Damnation (1985) by David Gerrold, the drone floater camera from Runaway (1985) by Michael Crichton, the aerostat monitor from The Diamond Age (1995) by Neal Stephenson, the loiter drone from The Algebraist (2004) by Iain Banks and the bee cam from City of Pearl (2004) by Karen Traviss. Comment/Join this discussion ( 1 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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Science Fiction
Timeline
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