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"Beyond a thousand years from now humans are not quite recognizably human, and I have trouble finding characters."
- Larry Niven
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| Perimeter Robot | ||
| A purpose-designed robotic sentry, looking for aliens. |
This story provides a cautionary tale for all those who would make use of robots to guard the perimeter of their campes.
| After landing on Regulus V, the men of the Yarmolinsky Expedition made camp and activated PR–22–0134, their perimeter robot, whom they called Max. The robot was a voice-activated, bipedal mechanism whose function was to guard the camp against the depredations of aliens, in the event that aliens were ever encountered. Max had originally been a regulation gun-metal gray, but on the interminable outward trip they had repainted him a baby blue. Max stood exactly four feet high. The men of the expedition had come to think of him as a kindly, reasonable little metal man—a ferrous gnome, a miniature Tin Woodman of Oz.
They were wrong, of course. Their robot had none of the qualities which they projected onto him. PR–22–0134 was no more reasonable than a McCormick harvester, no more kindly than an automated steel mill. Morally, he might be compared to a turbine or a radio, but not to anything human. PR–22–0134’s only human attribute was potentiality. |
| Technovelgy from The Cruel Equations,
by Robert Sheckley. Published by Playboy in 1969 Additional resources -
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'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
