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"I suspect that religion is a necessary evil in the childhood of our particular species. And that's one of the interesting things about contact with other intelligences: we could see what role, if any, religion plays in their development."
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Autonomic Cab | ||
| An automated taxicab (without robotic driver). |
This is an early instance of this phrase in Dick's work.
| "Thy destination, your eminence," the autonomic cab informed him, halting before a large but mostly subsurface structure...
He paid the cab, hopped from it, and scuttled across a short open space for a ramp... |
| From The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Doubleday in 1965 Additional resources -
|
Dick expands on the idea in Now Wait For Last Year, published in 1966.
Compare this to the autocab from Heinlein's 1951 novel Between Planets and the Tin Cabbie from James Blish's 1957 Cities in Flight.
The earliest mention I know about is the driverless taxi from The Living Machine (1935) by David H. Keller.
The cab said, "Are you Mr. Rip Van Winkle or something, sir? It's 2055. And I hope it satisfies you." The cab was old and was somewhat seedy, needing repairs; its irritability showed in the activity of its autonomic circuitry.
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