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"[Science fiction is] nightmares and visions, always outlined by the barely possible."
- Gregory Benford
 |
| Robotic Butterfly | ||
| A tiny, electromechanical flying robot. |
I can't think of another reference to a "robot butterfly".
| The robot monarch butterfly drops down and hovers above Susan Calvin. She stands in a long corridor of silvery metal. We cannot see either end of the tunnel. It stretches away in both directions ... a road from nowhere to nowhere. Susan wears a long caftan, like a nightshirt. We will have the feeling she is unable to sleep and is walking to settle her thoughts. The robot butterfly hovers and she looks up at it. Then from the butterfly we HEAR the hollow, faintly tinny VOICES of Bratenahl and Bernice recorded from the preceding scene:
BERNICE’S VOICE FROM BUTTERFLY (FILTER) |
| From I, Robot: The Movie,
by Harlan Ellison. Published by Asimov's Science Fiction in 1987 Additional resources -
|
A bit more:
Compare to the artificial butterfly from Changeling (1980) by Roger Zelazny.
The light fills the FRAME and we HEAR two things: the ECHO VOICE of CALVIN saying "Goodbye” over and over, growing ever fainter until it is overcome by the SOUND of the WHIRRING of the robot butterfly as it swoops down into the FRAME and the CAMERA FOLLOWS IT UP into the blazing light of the silver metal corridor...
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from I, Robot: The Movie
More Ideas
and Technology by Harlan Ellison
Tech news articles related to I, Robot: The Movie
Tech news articles related to works by Harlan Ellison
Robotic Butterfly-related
news articles:
- ChouChou Butterfly Robot
| Toy-Like Robot Well-Being Coaches Are The Best |
| Scent-Identifying Robot Uses Machine Learning |
| Robot Imagines Itself (Not The First Time This Has Happened) |
| Intelligent Trash Sorting By Robots Predicted Long Ago |
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'... it was as if the upper part had been removed, like a cut deck of cards.'
Sumomo will get those office workers into good shape!
'... who let their handbag computers carry all the conversation.'
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'He led me down the Hall of Portraits to the ego-likeness of the Duke Leto Atreides.'
'It's picking up diphenyl compounds and tetrahydrocarbons...'
'MacIntyre bent down without a word and picked up the wide skis necessary to negotiate the powdery ash.'
