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"I kind of take it for granted that our great-grandchildren will regard us as a sort of precursor species. That they won't think of us as human and if we could see them, we probably wouldn't think of them as human either."
- William Gibson
 |
| Synthetic Intellect | ||
| A device for providing a robot with intelligence. |
After an encounter with the weird Crystal Folk of Callisto, the ordinarily reliable robot assistant had become unreliable. Even insane! The robot (also called an "automat") deliberately downed the rocket ship on Saturn, and distributed the odd crystalline life forms on its surface.
Once, in a New York apartment, an old-style automat had gone crazy. It had hammered its way down through five floors before it had broken itself.
Robot madness! The trouble was not with the ship, but with Scarecrow’s intricate mechanical brain. Bar had heard of such mishaps before.
('Mad Robot' by Raymond Z. Gallun)
| HE HAD TO repair the robot some way, so that it would again be useful. He lifted its massive headpiece, and unscrewed the platinum cranium that contained Scarecrow’s marvelous synthetic intellect. There must be some obstruction that had caused the trouble.
He saw it at once... he began to think about things of which he could have no real understanding — of alien sciences, different from the experimental blunderings of man in his eternal urge to master matter, and of a queer, amorphous shell in the caves of Callisto... Had the Crystal Folk known what Saturn was like, and that it was a suit- able environment for them? There were little, frosty crystals incrusting the minutely packed wires that formed the cortex of Scarecrow’s brain. They glittered and pulsated with a living fire of changing colors, suggesting intelligence. Had they influenced the automat’s actions, by a means other than that of a simple obstruction? Carefully he scraped the crystals from Scarecrow’s brain, afterward applying oil, which he knew from Professor Dunridge’s experiments would prevent a regrowth. The black, pitchy substance in which the wires of the automat’s thought machine were packed contained a Norsonium salt, and had been slightly pitted; but no serious damage had been done. Afterward Bar recharged the energy cells of the robot. “Starting back to Callisto, Scarecrow,” he said presently. “Go to your post.” “Yes, sir !” the robot replied. He was his faithful self once more. |
| Technovelgy from Mad Robot,
by Raymond Z. Gallun. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1936 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the Iridium-Sponge Brain from Adam Link's Vengeance (1940) by Eando Binder, the positronic brain from Reason (1941) by Isaac Asimov, the neuristor from My Name is Legion (1976), by Roger Zelazny and the artificial brain from Edmond Hamilton's 1926 classic The Metal Giants.
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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.'
