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"It was [H.G. Wells'] adolescent fiction, his imaginative stories, that live forever - and yet are not acknowledged in literature classes as being great literature. So to hell with the academics!"
- Greg Bear
 |
| Bendix Anxiety Reducer | ||
| Machine-based psychotherapy. |
Elwood Caswell knew he was a homicidal maniac. That's why he hurried into the Home Therapy Appliances Store.
| "Oh," said the clerk, glancing distrustfully at Caswell's bloodshot eyes. "You seem a little nervous. Perhaps the portable Bendix Anxiety Reducer."
 (Mechanotherapy devices from 'Bad Medicine') "Anxiety's not my ticket either. What have you got for homicidal mania?" |
| Technovelgy from Bad Medicine,
by Robert Sheckley. Published by Galaxy in 1956 Additional resources -
|
Science fiction readers have had plenty of sessions with computer therapists; consider the Sigfrid von Shrink from Frederik Pohl's 1970 novel Gateway, Dr. Smile from Philip K. Dick's 1965 novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and the machine psychologists from James Blish's 1957 novel Cities in Flight.
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and Technology from Bad Medicine
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Tech news articles related to works by Robert Sheckley
| Collective Superintelligence Is At Hand! |
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| Will An AI Found A New Religion? |
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'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
'Then he became aware of a gentle pressure pushing him away from the ship.'
'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
