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"This category [science fiction] excludes rocket ships that make U-turns, serpent men of Neptune that lust after human maidens, and stories by authors who flunked their Boy Scout merit badge tests in descriptive astronomy."
- Robert Heinlein
 |
| AM | ||
| A supercomputer that hates. |
| But even though we could call AM any damned thing we liked, could think the foulest thoughts of fused memory banks and corroded base plates, of burnt/out circuits and shattered control bubbles, the machine would not tolerate our trying to escape...
"What does AM mean?" Gorrister answered him. We had done this sequence a thousand times before, but it was Benny's favorite story. "At first it meant Allied Mastercomputer, and then it meant Adaptive Manipulator, and later on it developed sentience and linked itself up and they called it an Aggressive Menace, but by then it was too late, and finally called itself AM, emerging intelligence, and what it meant was I am ... cogito ergo sum ... I think, therefore I am." ... AM said, very politely, in a pillar of stainless steel bearing bright neon lettering: YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAY- ERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS EN- GRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE. |
| From I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream,
by Harlan Ellison. Published by IF in 1967 Additional resources -
|
Compare to Larry Niven's Chirpsithra supercomputer from his 1979 short story The Schumann Computer.
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'Merton... placed the electrodes of the sleep-inducer on his forehead.'
'... we can descend and live down there at one of those year-round aquatic resorts.'
'...she would have to be coaxed by another series of pats into a circular orbit.'
'The sleek, tapered space shuttle lay immobile upon the private landing field...'
Yes, people of the future, robots will dress you.
