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" I think that computers today allow us one last opportunity to provide something like a level playingfield in America."
- William Gibson
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| Hammock Crutches | ||
| How would worm-like creatures walk about under heavy gravity? |
| Humanity steeled itself for the coming ordeal of horror under the Troxxt.
THEY WERE truly worm-like in form. As soon as the two night-black cylinders had landed, they strode, from their ships, their tiny segmented bodies held off the ground by a complex harness supported Dy long and slender metal crutches. They erected a dome-like fort around each ship one in Australia and one in the Ukraine captured the few courageous individuals who had ventured close to their landing-sites, and disappeared back into the dark craft with their squirming prizes... And over all courteously caring for us like an intelligent parent were our mentors, taking their giant supervisory strides on metallic crutches, while their pale little bodies lay curled in the hammocks that swung from each paired length of shining leg. |
| Technovelgy from Liberation of Earth,
by William Tenn. Published by Future Science Fiction in 1953 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the robass from The Quest for Saint Aquin (1951) by Anthony Boucher and the the centipede-machine from Monsters of Mars (1931) by Edmond Hamilton, the centipede from Killing Titan (2015) by Greg Bear and the Walker Wagon from Farmer in the Sky (1950) by Robert Heinlein.
(Walker Wagon from Farmer in the Sky)
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| The 'Last Mile' In China Crowded With Delivery Robots |
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'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
'Internally its made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
