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"In 1977, it took about eight months for a slightly faster more refined mechanism to put punk in the window of Holt Renfrew. It's gotten faster ever since."
- William Gibson
 |
| Automatic Cultivators | ||
| Agricultural robots. |
| High in the deep blue of the afternoon sky rode a tiny speck of glistening metal, scarce visible in the glare of the bright sun. The workers on the machines below glanced up for a moment — four twenty-one it must be — then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators. Even this little break in the afternoon program was of interest in this dull monopoly of green. But they would soon be starting back to the plantation city. These endless fields of castor bean plants had to be cultivated, but with the great machines that did the work it required but a few dozen men to cultivate an entire county. Indeed, so vast was the area, that little helicopters were even now resting on the big cultivator, that they might fly back at the end of the day, leaving the machine where it was, ready to use in the morning. |
| Technovelgy from Piracy Preferred,
by John W. Campbell. Published by Amazing Stories in 1930 Additional resources -
|
Compare to 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 field minder from Who Can Replace A Man (1963) by Brian Aldiss, 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, the robot crab from Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson and the agricultural robot pest controller from Runaway (1985) by Michael Crichton.
See also the robot lawn mower from City (1944) by Clifford Simak.
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'He was in a high-ceilinged windowless cell with walls of glittering white porcelain.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors...'
'The robant and the tiny old woman entered the control room slowly...'
'Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs... What are the odds?'
'It is as you thought when you constructed the time crystal, my master Vaylan.'
'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
