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"A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Robot Bird | ||
| A small winged UAV that can mimic a bird in flight. |
When you're a Stinker, and other people can't stand to be around you, the company of intelligent robotic birds with excellent voice recognition abilities and conversational skills can be a blessing.
| He ruffled his plastic feathers. "I have calculated... that the retentive capacity of my memory is now restricted to a mere 70,000 additional words - how about fixing me up with two more retentive banks?"
...Craig smiled faintly. "As soon as possible and that's a promise." Gun extended one wing, examined his feathers and said: "Many thanks." When he had first built them, they had been crude indeed, flying mechanisms with little more than a reflex-response unit. Over the years, however, he had given them life and intelligence... They had developed into personalities and provided stimulating companions in his isolation. He had given them free-decision, apart from their business as bodyguards and all three had total recall. Gun, the golden eagle, was a compulsive reader... Recky, the first of the two kestrals, was apt to become lost in classical music while Screen, the second one, was literally working his way through college in a variety of abstract subjects. |
| Technovelgy from Invader on My Back,
by Philip E. High. Published by Ace Books in 1968 Additional resources -
|
Here's a typical sample of Gun's interaction with Craig's enemies:
"- what kind of bird flies at ninety-seven thousand feet for God's sake?"
High above, Gun folded his wings and dropped like a stone. As he dropped his body vibrated oddly and things happened to the ship below him. Sparks danced on its back and where the sparks danced, the surface opened jaggedly spraying smoke and fragments...
Compare to the bird-like robots from Flamingo (1930) by CE Heller and the metal birds from Vulcan's Hammer (1960), by Philip K. Dick.
The operator gave it magnification. "Okay, it's a bird, yeah a bird, small eagle or something."
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Invader on My Back
More Ideas
and Technology by Philip E. High
Tech news articles related to Invader on My Back
Tech news articles related to works by Philip E. High
Robot Bird-related
news articles:
- Robocopter Listens And Obeys
- Robot Bird Alights On Human Hand
- SHEPHERD-MIL, A Birdlike Soaring UAV
- Robo-Raven Flapping Wing Robot Bird
- Birds Aren't Real - Wake Up, California! (With Bird Watching Guide)
- Flying Robot Inspired By Hawks
- Robotic Crow Design, Like Crows, Is A Bit Creepy
| Mori3 Autonomous Shapeshifting Robot |
| Tesla Seeks 'Tesla Robotaxi' And 'Robobus' Trademarks Ignoring Prior Art |
| Scary Grid Safety Robots |
| Humanoid Boxing Robot KO's Opponent - It's A Knockout! |
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
