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"One could imagine a very ascetic sort of life ... where the body is ignored. This is something I've played with in my books, where people hate to be reminded sometimes that they have bodies, they find it very slow and tedious."
- William Gibson
 |
| Sheem Spider Robot | ||
| A robotic spider. |
The Sheem robots are described as follows:
The Spider robot is seen within a dark chamber.
The Sheem Robots were modeled after living animals of various worlds, and the Spider is considered to have been the most perfect of them all.
| "The screen lit up -- for a second or two. Then it was dark again. The screen was still on. The light in the storage compartment had been cut off.
But they'd seen the robot for the moments it was visible. The great dark spider-shape crouched near the storage entry. Its unfettered master stood a dozen feet from it. Yango had looked up quickly as the screen view appeared, startled comprehension in his face, before his hand darted to the lighting switches beside the entry door. Cargo cases throughout the compartment had been shifted and tumbled about as though the bulky robot had forced a passage for itself through them... That wasn't the worst of it. 'You saw what happened to the side of the vault?' the captain asked unsteadily. They'd seen it. 'Burned out!' Vezzarn said, whitefaced. 'High intensity -- a combat beam! It'd take that. It's an old war robot he's got with him, skipper. You can't stop a thing like that... What do we do now?'" |
| Technovelgy from The Witches of Karres,
by James Schmitz. Published by Chilton in 1966 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the metallic spider from The War of the Worlds (1898) by H.G. Wells, the scarab robot from The Scarab (1936) by Raymond Z. Gallun, the spider robot from The Mystery of Element 117 (1949) by Milton K. Smith, the mechanical hound from Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury, the metal insects from The Invincible (1954) by Stanislaw Lem, the spider tripod from Rendezvous With Rama (1972) by Arthur C. Clarke, the spider cable device from The Web Between the Worlds (1979) by Charles Sheffield, the spider robotic insects from Runaway (1985) by Michael Crichton and the recon spiders from Minority Report (Movie) (2002) by Steven Spielberg. Thanks to Ashley for pointing this one out.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Witches of Karres
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Tech news articles related to The Witches of Karres
Tech news articles related to works by James Schmitz
| Proof Of Robothood - Not A Person |
| Dancing Robots Taught Dance Moves |
| Factory Humanoid Robots Built By Humanoid Robots |
| Mornine Sales Robot |
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'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain...'
'The observation vehicle was of that peculiar variety used in conveying a large number of people across rough terrain.'
'The real border was defended by... a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats.'
'I ... set my automatic astronomical instruments to searching for a habitable planet.'
'...haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?'
