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"On-line gaming environments are completely different things... Essentially it's massive global role-playing."
- Peter Watts
 |
| Automated Bomber | ||
| A bombing plane that automatically targets, drops, returns for fuel and more munitions, all automatically. |
| There was no one in the control room to read the clock, calendar, thermometer, radarscreen, or
any of the indicators which had their places on the walls and tables...
The absence of light and techncians did not disturb the functioning of the great airport's apparatus, for it had been designed to work automatically... So when sonar and radar picked up the sound and form of approaching aircraft from the north, it was instantly and correctly identifled as friendly, specifically an RB87 returning to base. The information was transmitted to the anti-aircraft batteries, to the intelligence depot thirty miles away, to the tabulators which recorded the bombing runs, to Fuel Control, far underground, and to the munitions dump, hidden beneath layer after layer of concrete and lead. There were, of course, no rows of lights to mark the field, but this lack was of no consequence to the mighty eight-engined bomber; for it depended, not on human perceptions and reactions but on the precise mathematical calculation of equipment adjusted to its charted flight and acutely sensitive to every variation of the weather, the terrain below, inimical devices, or even suddenly developed inadequacies of its own. During every second in the air these instruments computed, compensated, checked, and kept the ship on an inexorable and preordained course. The RB87, responding to the wind direction and velocity as well as a number of other factors, aimed itself at the two mile long concrete runway and skimmed down its length, coming to rest at last with its propellers still revolving pointlessly at the exact spot indicated in the reckonings which governed its navigation, marked on the runway by two small daubs of paint. |
| Technovelgy from Flying Dutchman,
by Ward Moore. Published by Adventure in 1951 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the automatic gun from The Gun (1952) by Philip K. Dick.
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'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'... with the Master-operator all you have to do is push one! A remarkable achievement!'
'Not like me. A T-1000, advanced prototype. A mimetic poly-alloy. Liquid metal.'
'It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
'The massive feet working the pedals, arms and hands flashing and glinting...'
'There were cubic miles of it, and it glistened like a silvery Christmas tree...'
'Jason had been guiding the caravan of cars as usual...'
"The robot solemnly hit a ball against the wall, picked it up and teed it, hit it again, over and again...'
