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"To get anywhere, or even live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer."
- Robert Heinlein
 |
| Slamhound | ||
| An automated assassination device with a keen sense of smell. |
The canine analogy is useful in several ways in the narrative: it subtly emphasizes the keen sensitivity to odors possessed by the device, and it seems quite natural chasing a car...
| THEY sent A SLAMHOUND on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs
and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized
hexogene and flaked TNT. He didn't see it coming. The last he saw of India was the pink stucco facade of a place called the Khush-Oil Hotel. Because he had a good agent, he had a good contract. Because he had a good contract, he was in Singapore an hour after the explosion. Most of him, anyway. The Dutch surgeon liked to joke about that, how an unspecified percentage of Turner hadn't made it out of Palam International on that first flight and had to spend the night there in a shed, in a support vat. |
| Technovelgy from Count Zero,
by William Gibson. Published by Arbor House in 1986 Additional resources -
|
The slamhound reminds one of the mechanical hound of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Compare also the OSMO (Osmic Mobile Observers) from Quantico (2007) by Greg Bear. Also, the sheem spider robot from The Witches of Karres (1966) by James Schmitz.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Count Zero
More Ideas
and Technology by William Gibson
Tech news articles related to Count Zero
Tech news articles related to works by William Gibson
Slamhound-related
news articles:
- DARPA's 'BigDog' Robot Now In Puppy Stage
- Pneupard Feline Pneumatic Quadruped Robot
- Autonomous Robot Weapons For Terrorists?
- When Slamhounds Attack
- Cheetah Robot Will Run Faster Than Humans
- Cheetah Robot Hits Record 18 MPH In Video
- Cheetah Robot Passes 28 MPH (Video)
- Outrunner Robot, Six-Legged Slamhound
- MIT's Robotic Cheetah Runs Free - And Frolics In The Grass
- SpotMini Robot Dog, Autonomous And On Sale In 2019
- EllipticaRunner Robot Is Fast, Amazing, Slightly Worrisome
| Bunker Busters and Bore-Pellets |
| Can A Swarm Of Deadly Drones Take Out An Aircraft Carrier? |
| Has Turkey Been Stealing Rain From Iran? |
| We Need To Build Anti-Drone Systems For Civilian Spaces |
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
