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"...science fiction is sort of like a sociological genome. It's a huge range of possible futures, most of them useless; some vital. You never really know in advance."
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![]() This is a very early reference to the idea of a city that is really one large, complex machine. It is self-maintaining; it is designed to exist forever, without any intervention by man.
Readers familiar with Robert Silverberg may recall the city on Lemnos, from his novel The Man in the Maze; also, in Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles he refers to cities that kill invaders and clean up after themselves.
Compare to the Machine from The Machine Stops (1909) by EM Forster, the government machine from Mechanocracy (1932) by Miles J. Breuer, the games machine from The World of Null-A (1945) by AE van Vogt, central computer from The City and the Stars (1956) by Arthur C. Clarke, the Vulcan 3 computer from Vulcan's Hammer (1960) by Philip K. Dick and the WatchdØg from WatchdØg (1972) by Jack C. Haldeman. Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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Science Fiction
Timeline
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'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
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It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
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'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
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''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
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'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
DNA Printed Book By Isaac Asimov Now Available
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
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