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"I've been very obsessive about writing science fiction for far too many years. Anyone with an ounce of sense would have given up years ago."
- Charles Stross
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| Rolem (Wrestling Robot) | ||
| A robotic wrestling companion. |
One of Earth's caretakers in This Immortal, by Roger Zelazny, is Konstantin Kharageosis, who also goes by Conrad (and various other names). Conrad stopped aging around thirty (hence the book title). At one point, Conrad goes slightly mad, and his companions set a robotic sparring partner upon him to keep him occupied.
| Off in the distance, I heard a scream. 'Stop it, Hassan, it's not supposed to do that!' Which meant that I was Conrad, and that I was in Egypt, and that the expressionless face before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature that could be set for five times the strength of a human being, and was probably so set, a creature which could be given the reflexes of an adrenalized cat, and doubtless had them in full operation. Only a golem wasn't supposed to kill, except by accident and Rolem was trying to kill me. |
| Technovelgy from This Immortal,
by Roger Zelazny. Published by Ace Science Fiction in 1965 Additional resources -
|
This novel is one of my favorites; it bears repeated reading, and is in no way dated nearly forty years after publication. Zelazny creates a remarkable fusion of past and future in This Immortal. He does a fabulous job of reverting Earth to the age of heroic Greek mythology, where people who live too close to "hot spots" have children with mutations that just might make them satyrs or other creatures of myth.
Here's a bit more detail about the wrestling robot:
Not surprisingly, this novel won the Hugo for best science fiction novel in 1966.
See the entry for robot, from R.U.R. by Karel Capek, who coined the word "robot."
Compare to the fight-machine boxing robot from Jingle in the Jungle, by Aldo Giunta, published by IF in 1957.
A worthy opponent was the golem. Hasan had it programmed at twice the statistically-averaged strength of a man and had its reflex-time upped by fifty percent. Its memory contained hundreds of wrestling holds and its governor theoretically prevented it from killing or maiming its opponent - all through a series of chemelectric afferent nerve-analogues, which permitted it to gauge to an ounce the amount of pressure necessary to snap a bone or tear a tendon. Rolem was about five feet, six inches in height and weighed around two hundred fifty pounds...
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from This Immortal
More Ideas
and Technology by Roger Zelazny
Tech news articles related to This Immortal
Tech news articles related to works by Roger Zelazny
Rolem (Wrestling Robot)-related
news articles:
- HOAP-2 Robot Masters Sumo And Linux. RoboShiko!
- Robots Get Pressure-Sensitive Skin
- Amazing Robot Wrestling
- Arm Spirit Arm-Wrestling Arcade Game Rampage
- Robot Wrestler Vs. Human Wrestler Video
- Touch Sensor For Sensitive Robots
- E-Skin For Robots - And Maybe You
- Autonomous Sumo Robot Wrestling Video
- Soft Robots Use Kirigami Piezoelectric Sensor Skin
- RoboShiko! Sumo Exercises Still Good For Robots
| Artificial Skin For Robots Is Coming Right Along |
| Robot Guard Dog On Duty |
| Wearable Artificial Fabric Muscles |
| Dancing Robots Taught Dance Moves |
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
