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"I went back to science fiction to try a few experiments …and my first experiment was a disaster…"
- Alfred Bester
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| Field-Minder | ||
| An agricultural robot. |
It's lonely work out there in the fields; fortunately, the human beings give orders.
| The field-minder finished turning the top-soil of a two-thousand-acre field. When it had turned the last furrow, it climbed on to the highway and looked back at its work... the land was bad. Like the ground all over Earth, it was vitiated by over-cropping or the long-lasting effects of nuclear bombardment.
It went slowly down the road, taking its time. It was intelligent enough to appreciate the neatness all about it. Nothing worried it, beyond a loose inspection plate above its atomic pile which ought to be attended to. Thirty feet high, it gleamed complacently in the mild sunshine.
 ('But Who Can Replace A Man' by Brian W. Aldiss) |
| Technovelgy from But Who Can Replace A Man,
by Brian Aldiss. Published by Infinity in 1958 Additional resources -
|
It was able to communicate with robots in charge of warehouses; it could print out a card with its requirements.
This robot will probably need the services of the agricultural robot pest controller from the 1985 movie Runaway by Michael Crichton.
Compare to the automatic cultivators from Piracy Preferred (1930) by John W. Campbell, the conscious farm machines from The Hidden Colony (1935) by Otfrid von Hanstein, the robot farmer from The Turning Wheel (1954) by Philip K. Dick, the Robomule from Bill the Galactic Hero (1965) by Harry Harrison, the self-guided tractor from At the Bottom of a Hole (1966) by Larry Niven and the robot crab from Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson.
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
