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"Fuzzy logic tries to get machines to think like people do, with inexact fuzzy terms."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Amphibious Skimmer | ||
| Amphibious drone with blades. |
| "Here we go," said Kittiwake. "Any moment now." And there they were, breaking the surface, bobbing up out of the ocean. Skimmers. Moa turned her binoculars onto them, a trickle of chill sweat running down her spine. These were the things that had killed her father. At first, they seemed like smooth metal balls about two feet in diameter, with four red lenses that looked uncomfortably like eyes spaced around their upper hemisphere. As Moa watched, they rose a little way, until they were hovering a few inches above the water. They swivelled towards the drones that were speeding across the waves. "How many do you see?" Kittiwake asked. "Three?" "That's right. Three," Moa said. ...
They shot across the sea, raising fins of spume behind them. As they went, a multitude of blades unfolded from their round bodies and began to spin. By the time they reached the drones, each one was a whirling blur of sharp edges. They smashed into their targets like cannonballs, reducing them to splinters in moments. Then they sped off on a new course. Another drone was torn to shreds, throwing bits of wood in the air...and the Skimmers stopped, coming to a dead halt. ... |
| Technovelgy from Storm Thief,
by Chris Wooding. Published by Scholastic in 2006 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the Claws from Philip K. Dick's 1953 short story Second Variety and to the Wabbler from Murray Leinster's 1942 short story The Wabbler.
Thanks to Connor Lawrence for sharing this reference with us.
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"Everybody and his dog, it seemed, wanted to live out in the country; transportation and communication were no longer isolating factors."
'... the new typewriter that could be talked to, and which transposed the spoken sound into typed words.'
