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"You have to budget the number of fuzzy rules you use to control a system. It turns out, you can state the optimality principle in three words: 'patch the bumps.'"
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Atomic Shell | ||
| A nuclear munition, fired from a cannon. |
Nothing like a man who is enthusiastic about his job.
 (Buck Rogers: Prepare to fire the atomic shell)
 (Buck Rogers: The atomic shell on target) |
| Technovelgy from Buck Rogers, 2430 AD,
by Philip Nowlan (w/D. Calkins). Published by Not Known in 1929 Additional resources -
|
They just don't write dialog like this anymore:
"Can I hit it? Just watch me plant an atomic shell right in its parlor!"
[Hancock scores a clean hit.]
"Now! They can gather that ship up in a dust pan!
Compare to the magnetic shell from The Great Stone of Shardis (1897) by Frank Stockton, the
atomic bomb from The World Set Free (1914) by HG Wells, the roving bomb from Lost Rocket (1941) by Manly Wade Wellman, the
Wabbler from The Wabbler (1942) by Murray Leinster, the planet-busting bomb from Testing (1956) by JJ Ferat and the smart bullet from Runaway (1985) by Michael Crichton.
"Plug that craft for me, Jud! Can you do it?
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More Ideas
and Technology from Buck Rogers, 2430 AD
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and Technology by Philip Nowlan (w/D. Calkins)
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Tech news articles related to works by Philip Nowlan (w/D. Calkins)
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| Bullet Steers Itself! The Advanced Low-Cost Munitions Ordnance ALaMO |
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'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
