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"In WWII, they had a saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. I think the modern equivalent of that is that there are no jaded, bored people in the high-tech industry, in the land of really good hardcore geeks."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Anti-Burglar Installations | ||
| Every electronic house should have automated defenses. |
The house's electronic brain was puzzled about people on the porch.
| ...were these people guests? It searched memory circuits. Guests were people who came to visit while owners were home. Guests were friendly, talkative. The house decided this man and woman did not fit in that category of identification.
Hurriedly, it searched its myriad electrical networks and found the only logical description of the intruders—burglars. Behind the walls, relays clicked and infinitesimal electrical charges darted across a spidery web of silver wires only to find themselves in the dead-ends of missing connections. The anti-burglar installations are missing! the house thought frantically. If the protective devices had been present, it would have been able to spray the intruders with tear gas, paralyze them with electrical charges, thrust them from the house with antigravity rays, or kill them by any one of a dozen methods. Without the anti-burglar mechanisms, it was defenseless. What can I do? the house wondered. What can I do! |
| Technovelgy from The Angry House,
by Richard R. Smith. Published by Startling Stories in 1955 Additional resources -
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Science Fiction
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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!'
