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"The first thing that's wrong with being a science-fiction writer today is that the present has caught up with the future and surpassed it."
- Peter Watts
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| Robot Spectra Analyzer | ||
| Device used to find ones position in real space. |
So, you're lost in real space. There must be some way to determine your position relative to the known positions of the stars.
| It was a twenty-hour jump, ship's time, and I came through in the middle of nowhere. The robot analyzer chuckled to itself and scanned all the stars, comparing them to the spectra of Proxima Centauri. It finally rang a bell and blinked a light. I peeped through the eyepiece.
A last reading with the photocell gave me the apparent magnitude and a comparison with its absolute magnitude gave me its distance. Not as bad as I thought - a six-week run, give or take a few days. After feeding a course tape into the robot pilot, I strapped into the acceleration tank and went to sleep. |
| From The Repairman,
by Harry Harrison. Published by Galaxy Science Fiction in 1959 Additional resources -
|
Acceleration tanks were used to make boosting under high gravities less trying. SF audiences were used to the concept by the time this short story was written; see the entry for acceleration-tank from Doc Smith's 1934 novel Triplanetary.
Compare to the Astroposit from The Hunch (1961) by Christopher Anvil.
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''... major cities of Earth have free electrical power conveniently processed from their own noise.'
'The appearance was enough like a giant witch's broom to justify the nickname.'
'A vast circle of scarlet stars came up into the greenish desert dusk.'
'He had constructed an organ, a brain, of metal, entirely inorganic and lifeless...'
'I shall never forget the sight... when the yellow gleam of the precious metal appeared under the star dust.'
Oh, and now I suppose someone will develop the robotic porch pirate.
'This thing will start at one end of ...a house and build it complete to the other end, following drawings only.'
