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"the [science fiction] writer should be able to convince the reader (and himself) that the wonders he is describing really can come true...and that gets tricky when you take a good, hard look at the world around you."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Teleoperated Lab Robot | ||
| A robot is used to conduct experiments in an environment too extreme for humans. |
One of the operators of a remotely controlled beetle car is inspecting a project deep in the atmosphere of Jupiter. He is surprised to find a laboratory, with an occupant hard at work.
| ...Helmuth saw instead that there was a large platform jutting out from the buttress not far below him, just to one side of the rails. It was enclosed and roofed, but the material was transparent. And there was motion inside it...
For a wild instant he had thought there was a man on Jupiter already; but as he pulled up just above the platform's roof, he realized that the moving thing inside was - of course - a robot; a misshapen, many-tentacled thing about twice the size of a man. It was working busily with bottles and flasks, of which it seemed to have thousands on benches and shelves all around it The whole enclosure was a litter of what Helmuth took to be chemical apparatus, and off to one side was an object which might have been a microscope... The robot looked up at him and gesticulated with two or three tentacles... "This is Doc Barth. How do you like my laboratory?" |
| From Cities in Flight,
by James Blish. Published by Avon in 1957 Additional resources -
|
It turns out that this is the only way to study the 'jellyfish' of Jupiter, life forms that float freely in the upper levels of the planet.
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'Copseyes floated overhead... each a sonic stunner... they were there to enforce the law...'
'It was not a large office, but it was quite spy-proof and quite undetectably so.'
When you hear that music, you know you're in for adventure - and predictions of possible technological futures!
'Vergil had trained the lymphocytes in the past six months to interact as much as possible with each other and with their environment...'
'This was really free power... Power carried across millions of miles on Addison's tight-beam principle.'
'Whoever was placed inside the apparatus instantaneously experienced all the charms, lures, wiles, winks and witchery of all the fairer sex in the Universe at once.'
