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"The first thing that's wrong with being a science-fiction writer today is that the present has caught up with the future and surpassed it."
- Peter Watts
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| Flying Eye | ||
| A remote-controlled device for surveillance overflight. |
When trying to repair a broken hyperspace beacon on a distant planet, it's always a good idea to get some idea of the "lay of the land" before going in oneself.
| Staying outside the atmosphere, I sent a Flying Eye down to look things over. In this business, you learn early where and when to risk your own skin. The Eye would be good enough for the preliminary survey.
...There was a nose and tail radar in the Eye, and I fed their signals in to a scope as an amplitude curve. When the two [landmark mountain] peaks coincided, I spun the Eye controls and dived the thing down. |
| Technovelgy from The Repairman,
by Harry Harrison. Published by Galaxy Science Fiction in 1959 Additional resources -
|
The Eye could be controlled manually, or it could be locked into a particular course. For example, you might want the device to circle a particular location at a set radius and altitude.
Take a look at the copseye from Larry Niven's 1972 short story Cloak of Anarchy and the Raytron apparatus from Ray Cummings' 1928 classic Beyond the Stars for different takes on this ancient wish (remote viewing - see Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, circa 200 BC).
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"The robot solemnly hit a ball against the wall, picked it up and teed it, hit it again, over and again...'
'There was a wall ahead... It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
'...support the interior human structure against Jupiter’s pull.'
'Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray...'
'The German chemists have discovered how to supply the needed elements in compact, undiluted form...'
'Compounds devised by the biochemists for the rapid building of bone...'
'The car faltered as the external command came to brake...'
'It is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized...'
