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"I am first of all not a science fiction writer … I write, I suppose, what the Latin Americans call magic realism."
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In the novel, a group of scientists are working in a multilevel underground laboratory; the levels were connected by an open central core.
In this excerpt, it is rather important for Mark Hall to scale the central core to reach a different level of the structure.
Automatic guns that target and fire date from WWII. The SCR-584 anti-aircraft gun laying radar was a highly accurate system developed early in the war.
Work also started on a suitable gun-laying computer that could use electrical, as opposed to mechanical, inputs for pointing data. Bell Labs delivered an analog computer known as the M-9 Gun Predictor for this role, able to control four of the Army's standard 90 mm M3 guns.
It could detect bomber-sized targets at about 40 miles range, and was generally able to automatically track them at about 18 miles. Accuracy within this range was 25 yards...
In Crichton's 1980 novel Congo, the sentry guns used to protect the camp perimeter against fierce gorillas appear to be laser guided by humans who pick out the targets.
"That's a LATRAP. For laser-tracking projectile," she whispered. "The LATRAP system consists of multiple LGSDs attached to sequential RFSDs."
She told him that the sentries held guns which were actually laser-guided sight devices, linked to rapid firing sensor devices on tripods. "They lock onto the target," she said, "and do the actual shooting once the target is identified."
Compare to the robot gun from Aliens (1986), by Alan Dean Foster; this weapon uses artificial intelligence and object recognition. Also, see the invisible watchmen from Murder in the Void (1938), by Edmond Hamilton.
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