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"There's a poetry in the materials we use to construct our world of artifacts; it speaks of our long history as a technological species."
- William Gibson
 |
| Hammer | ||
| Flying blunt trauma weapon remote-controlled by an artificially intelligent computer. |
In the future depicted by the novel, an artificially-intelligent computer system determines that it needs to defend itself against human beings.
| Standing by a window, he watched a mob of Healers struggling with a flock of hammers. Again and again the hammers dipped, striking and retreating; the mob fought them with stones and pipe. Finally the hammers were driven off...
"I can't understand how Vulcan 3 came to have such things," Daily said. "Where did it get them?" "It made them," Barris said. "They're adaptations of mobile repair instruments. We supplied it with materials, but it did the actual repair work. It must have perceived the possibilities in the situation a long time ago, and started turning them out." "I wonder how many of them he has," Daily said. "It, I mean..." An hour later more hammers returned; this time they had equipped themselves with pencil beams..." |
| Technovelgy from Vulcan's Hammer,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Ace Books in 1960 Additional resources -
|
Just so you'll know, here's what it looks like when an attack happens:
The object smashed against him. Dill reeled and fell, his harms flailing. The object struck again, then lifted abruptly and zoomed off above their heads...
Compare to the repair robots from The Well-Oiled Machine (1950) by H.B. Fyfe.
Something flashed through the air, something shiny and metallic. It headed straight for Jason Dill...
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'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
