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"I suspect that religion is a necessary evil in the childhood of our particular species. And that's one of the interesting things about contact with other intelligences: we could see what role, if any, religion plays in their development."
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| 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.
Compare to the space laboratory from Crystalized Thought (1937) by Nat Schachner.
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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'Merton... placed the electrodes of the sleep-inducer on his forehead.'
'... we can descend and live down there at one of those year-round aquatic resorts.'
'...she would have to be coaxed by another series of pats into a circular orbit.'
'The sleek, tapered space shuttle lay immobile upon the private landing field...'
Yes, people of the future, robots will dress you.
