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"[Science fiction] has become big business, where books are merchandised and promoted and distributed and placed on sale like slabs of bacon or cans of soup."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Perimeter Robot | ||
| A purpose-designed robotic sentry, looking for aliens. |
This story provides a cautionary tale for all those who would make use of robots to guard the perimeter of their campes.
| After landing on Regulus V, the men of the Yarmolinsky Expedition made camp and activated PR–22–0134, their perimeter robot, whom they called Max. The robot was a voice-activated, bipedal mechanism whose function was to guard the camp against the depredations of aliens, in the event that aliens were ever encountered. Max had originally been a regulation gun-metal gray, but on the interminable outward trip they had repainted him a baby blue. Max stood exactly four feet high. The men of the expedition had come to think of him as a kindly, reasonable little metal man—a ferrous gnome, a miniature Tin Woodman of Oz.
They were wrong, of course. Their robot had none of the qualities which they projected onto him. PR–22–0134 was no more reasonable than a McCormick harvester, no more kindly than an automated steel mill. Morally, he might be compared to a turbine or a radio, but not to anything human. PR–22–0134’s only human attribute was potentiality. |
| Technovelgy from The Cruel Equations,
by Robert Sheckley. Published by Playboy in 1969 Additional resources -
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| Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin |
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'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'
'...then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.'
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
'Internally it’s 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.'
