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"Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn; when they do, which isn't often, on their own, the hard way."
- Robert Heinlein
 |
| The Machine (M) | ||
| An autonomous robot able to alter its appearance and functionality at will. |
| The machine was a foot wide and two feet long: it looked like an oversized box of crackers. Silently, with great caution, it climbed the side of a concrete building; it had lowered two rubberized rollers and was now beginning the first phase of its job...
Beam, holding the cigaret lighter, walked toward the M. A receptor stalk waved toward him and the machine retreated. Its lines wavered, flowed, and then painfully reformed. For an interval, the device struggled with itself; then, reluctantly, the portable t-v unit again became visible. |
| From The Unreconstructed M,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Science Fiction Stories in 1957 Additional resources -
|
I don't have text references, but readers might compare the Shrike from Dan Simmon's 1989 novel Hyperion and the Aleph from Gregory Benford's 1983 novel Against Infinity.
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The Machine (M)-related
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- MorpHex MKII The Unreconstructed Hexapod
| Nonhuman Artist Collective Keeps Robot Artist Earnings Until Legal |
| Atlas DRC Robot Now Untethered |
| Button-Pushing Robots Have Taken Our Jobs, Thankfully |
| Small Molecule Walker Takes First Steps |
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