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"Generally, the human race avoids doing anything radical until forced into it."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Floating Robot | ||
| A robot that floats in mid-air. |
| There was something before him in the darkness — something hanging in mid-air in that Stygian gloom! The hair prickled erect on his scalp and his spine crawled. For there, before his aching eyes, a glow came up; a brilliant crimson glow, shot with silver flashes of incandescence. And its light revealed the most fantastic being Marshall had ever seen in any nightmare.
 ('The Floating Robot' by David Wright O'Brien) It was a nameless thing of gleaming red metal, perhaps five feet in height. It had a formless head, with odd projections that might have been eyes, but there were no eyes in them. It had metallic arms, terminating in almost human hands. It had no legs, but a round bottom almost ludicrously like an untippable salt cellar, ringed by a band of what seemed to be radioactive gold. And it floated effortlessly perhaps a foot above the floor... "I am Yolan," repeated the monster, rather querulously. "What is this world? Why have I been trapped in this dark place? I am Yolan. I am Yolan." |
| Technovelgy from The Floating Robot,
by David Wright O'Brien. Published by Fantastic Adventures in 1941 Additional resources -
|
Fans of Star Trek: The Original Series might recognize this robot:
Here's the cover for Fantastic Adventures for January, 1941.
('The Floating Robot' by David Wright O'Brien)
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I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
'... nothing was perfected until M. Pantalon announced the completion of his automatic valet.'
'...its streets were of remarkable width, with few or no buildings so high as mosques, churches, State-offices, or palaces in Tellurian cities.'
'...it was all composed of tiny, identical cubes, carefully laid to form a tilelike surface.'
'He carried on his person a triggering mechanism sensitive to his heartbeat.'
'...Anything was possible in my imaginary environment.'
'Somewhere in space, a chrome and blue automobile raced the green light of Earth.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair...'
