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"Bureaucracies hide their mistakes, because people's careers are tied to those mistakes. Therefore, bureaucracies are a perfect mechanism for perpetuating mistakes."
- Frank Herbert
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| Rat Thing | ||
| A guard cyborg created from a living animal. |
| The body is Rottweiler-sized, segmented into overlapping hard plates like those of a rhinoceros. The legs are long, curled way up to deliver power, like a cheetah's. It must be the tail that makes people refer to it as a Rat Thing, because that's the only ratlike part - incredibly long and flexible.
The grass under the Rat Thing is beginning to smoke. "Careful. Supposedly they have really nasty isotopes inside," Hiro says behind her... "A radioactive substance that makes heat. That's its energy source." "How do you turn it off?" "You don't. It keeps making heat until it melts." The body converges to a sharp nose. In the front it bends down sharply, and there is a black canopy, raked sharply like the windshield of a fighter plane. If the Rat Thing has eyes, this is where it looks out. |
| Technovelgy from Snow Crash,
by Neal Stephenson. Published by Bantam in 1992 Additional resources -
|
Compare the Rat Thing to the slamhound from William Gibson's 1986 novel Count Zero, and of course the mechanical hound from Ray Bradbury's 1953 classic Fahrenheit 451.
Thanks to Jerry for suggesting this item.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Snow Crash
More Ideas
and Technology by Neal Stephenson
Tech news articles related to Snow Crash
Tech news articles related to works by Neal Stephenson
Rat Thing-related
news articles:
- MIT's Cheetah Robot Runs Easier Than Real Cheetah
- MIT Robot Cheetah Video Shows Gait Transition
- WildCat Runs Faster Than You, Untethered
- Why, Oh Why, Must We Develop Robots That Run Faster Than I Do?
- Cheetah 2 Robot Now Leaps Obstacles To Get You
- Unitree A1 Robot ala Black Mirror and Snow Crash
- Robot Guard Dog On Duty
| Epirus High-Power Microwave Defeats Drones |
| It's A Giant Robot! You Reporters Have Been Warned! |
| Tactile Skin Supplier Map |
| Robot Bees 3D Printed By Festo |
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'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
