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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
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| Boring Heat Machine | ||
| Takes tunnel boring material and turns it into building material. |
| In digging their volcanic shafts it would be no impossible task for them to adapt their wonderful machines for fashioning the lava product into underground corridors and chambers instead of the castles or fortresses they had first built above ground...
Then I noticed that the character of the earth flowing from the boring machine was changing. In a few minutes molten lava was pouring out of the broad-lipped spouts. There ensued unusual activity on the part of the shovel-handed machines, whose operators, with a skill that held me enthralled, manipulated the liquid stone, absorbing the heat from it with accessory apparatus, and shaping it as it hardened. |
| Technovelgy from The Onslaught From Venus,
by Frank Phillips. Published by Science Wonder Stories in 1929 Additional resources -
|
From the cover description:
"Here we see ... one of their heat machines is turning out molten lava made from rock and earth, and which later will be used to make building blocks for these invaders."
(Heat machine from 'The Onslaught From Venus' by Frank Phillips)
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'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
'Oscar picked up a trowel. 'I'm the tool for the mortar,' the little trowel squeaked cheerfully.'
'... he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship.'
The Roujin Z system provides care to fully bedridden patients - and then some!
'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.'
