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"The primary attraction [of writing sf] is the sheer pleasure of creating something from whole cloth."
- Dan Simmons
 |
| Self-Service Cafeteria | ||
| Food on demand. |
| The bright lights of a restaurant showed clear against the sunlight and he entered, slumping in a chair, and staring dully at a row of buttons to his right. He pressed several of them, then waited, wondering what was the next thing to do. Machinery whined beneath the smooth surface of the table, a panel slid aside, and a tray, loaded with steaming dishes, rose before him. As he lifted the tray the panel closed again and he smiled as he recognised an old idea in its modern form.
He had chosen a self-service cafeteria. |
| Technovelgy from The Mechanical Monarch,
by E.C. Tubb. Published by Ace Books in 1958 Additional resources -
|
As far as I know, the earliest instance of this idea in sf is found in Burroughs' 1912 novel A Princess of Mars - the automated restaurant.
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and Technology from The Mechanical Monarch
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and Technology by E.C. Tubb
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Tech news articles related to works by E.C. Tubb
| Amazon Blimp Parent Drone Concept |
| Tortoise Mobile Smart Stores |
| Sony Pocket Air Conditioner Is Phil Dick's Idea! |
| ROAM Robotics Skiing Exoskeleton |
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Science Fiction
Timeline
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'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
