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"We didn't have a telephone and our family until I was about 15, in high school."
- Ray Bradbury
 |
| Amphibious Skimmer | ||
| Amphibious drone with blades. |
| "Here we go," said Kittiwake. "Any moment now." And there they were, breaking the surface, bobbing up out of the ocean. Skimmers. Moa turned her binoculars onto them, a trickle of chill sweat running down her spine. These were the things that had killed her father. At first, they seemed like smooth metal balls about two feet in diameter, with four red lenses that looked uncomfortably like eyes spaced around their upper hemisphere. As Moa watched, they rose a little way, until they were hovering a few inches above the water. They swivelled towards the drones that were speeding across the waves. "How many do you see?" Kittiwake asked. "Three?" "That's right. Three," Moa said. ...
They shot across the sea, raising fins of spume behind them. As they went, a multitude of blades unfolded from their round bodies and began to spin. By the time they reached the drones, each one was a whirling blur of sharp edges. They smashed into their targets like cannonballs, reducing them to splinters in moments. Then they sped off on a new course. Another drone was torn to shreds, throwing bits of wood in the air...and the Skimmers stopped, coming to a dead halt. ... |
| Technovelgy from Storm Thief,
by Chris Wooding. Published by Scholastic in 2006 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the Claws from Philip K. Dick's 1953 short story Second Variety and to the Wabbler from Murray Leinster's 1942 short story The Wabbler.
Thanks to Connor Lawrence for sharing this reference with us.
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and Technology from Storm Thief
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Tech news articles related to Storm Thief
Tech news articles related to works by Chris Wooding
| Sleeper Drones Lie in Wait |
| Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade |
| Moscow Attacked By Hundreds Of Drones |
| China's Handheld Electromagnetic Gun |
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'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
