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"This is a predictive tool I've used: There are goals we've sought for ten thousand years, and we'll go on seeking them. Instant transport and travel, immortality (or at least longevity and miracle cures.), instant learning …"
- Larry Niven
 |
| Commercial Fly | ||
| An autonomous, fly-sized manufactured creature that presents commercial advertisements. |
| Something sizzled to the right of him. A commercial, made by Theodorus Nitz, the worst house of all, had attached itself to his car.
"Get off," he warned it. But the commercial, well-adhered, began to crawl, buffeted by the wind, toward the door and the entrance crack. It would soon have squeezed in and would be haranguing him in the cranky, garbagey fashion of the Nitz advertisements. He could, as it came through the crack, kill it. It was alive, terribly mortal: the ad agencies, like nature, squandered hordes of them. The commercial, flysized, began to buzz out its message as soon as it managed to force entry. "Say! Haven't you sometimes said to yourself, I'll bet other people in restaurants can see me! And you're puzzled as to what to do about this serious, baffling problem of being conspicuous, especially-" Chic crushed it with his foot. |
| Technovelgy from The Simulacra,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Ace in 1964 Additional resources -
|
Here's another quote that gives more details about the device:
"Do people seem able to see right through your clothing?" it squeaked at them, bat-like, as it slithered into concealment under the front seat.
Compare to the scarab robot flying insect from The Scarab (1936) by Raymond Z. Gallun, the infiltrators from Vulcan's Hammer (1960) by Philip K. Dick, and the blurbflies from Nymphomation (2000) by Jeff Noon.
...a Theodorus Nitz commercial slipped in through the open window.
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- Ford's In-Car Ads From Billboards
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
