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"It's hard to tell stories about critters that are not human. John W. Campbell tried it, in "Twilight," and everybody says it's a wonderful story, and nobody ever reads it twice."
- Jerry Pournelle
 |
| Buggaroo | ||
| Martian creature for transportation. |
I couldn't resist the description and the illustration.
| Sidney stood for a minute scrutinizing the four buggaroo I had obtained. Two were already loaded with supplies, and an attendant was strapping on the sun-shaded seats of the others we were to ride. A bugaroo isn't much for looks, but it's a native of Martian deserts and can stand more heat and dryness than any other living thing.
 (Buggaroo from 'The Secret of the Canali' by Clifton B. Kruse) About eight feet long, and half as high, their grub-shaped bodies completely covered with chitinous plates, they creep over the hot sands on their dozen stumpy legs with the grace and speed of a caterpillar. |
| Technovelgy from The Secret of the Canali,
by Clifton B. Kruse. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1938 Additional resources -
|
As I recall, the steed of choice in Robert Heinlein's Glory Road was a six-legged horse named Ars Longa.
Many-legged robots and vehicles are an ongoing joy to science fiction readers. Compare to the robass from The Quest for Saint Aquin (1951) by Anthony Boucher, the centipede-machine from Monsters of Mars (1931) by Edmond Hamilton, the centipede from Killing Titan (2015) by Greg Bear and the walking fort from The Killing Machine (1964) by Jack Vance.
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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!'
