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"[Science fiction is] anything that turns you and your social context, the social you, inside out."
- Gregory Benford

Shoggoths  
  Bioengineered creatures, able to change shape, created for labor.  

"It was under the sea, at first for food and later for other purposes, that they first created earth life—using available substances according to long-known methods... They had done the same thing on other planets, having manufactured not only necessary foods, but certain multicellular protoplasmic masses capable of molding their tissues into all sorts of temporary organs under hypnotic influence and thereby forming ideal slaves to perform the heavy work of the community. These viscous masses were without doubt what Abdul Alhazred whispered about as the "Shoggoths"..."
Technovelgy from At the Mountains of Madness, by H.P. Lovecraft.
Published by Astounding Stories in 1936
Additional resources -

Compare to the Monsters Manufactured from HG Wells' 1896 novel The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for sending this item in.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from At the Mountains of Madness
  More Ideas and Technology by H.P. Lovecraft
  Tech news articles related to At the Mountains of Madness
  Tech news articles related to works by H.P. Lovecraft

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