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"The SF approach: an awareness that things could have been different, that this is one of many possible worlds, that if you came to this world from some other planet, this would be a science fiction world."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Garbage Device | ||
| Autonomous garbage collection device. |
Very handy - like a more motivated Roomba.
| "Gripes," he said, "tell me something. What would you do, right now, if you were me?" The joymaker answered without hesitation, as though that sort of question were coming up every day. "If I were you, Man Forrester, which is to say, if I were human, just unfrozen, without accommodations, lacking major social contacts, unemployed, unskilled—" "That's the picture, all right," Forrester agreed. "So answer the question." Something was crawling underfoot. He stepped aside, out of its way, a glittering metal thing. "I would go to a tea shop, Man Forrester. I would then read my orientation book while enjoying a light meal. I would then think things over. I would then—" "That's far enough." The metal thing, apparently espying Forrester's discarded cigarette pack, scuttled over to it and gobbled it down. Forrester watched it for a second, then nodded. "You've got some good ideas, machine," he said. "Take me to a tea shop!" |
| Technovelgy from The Age of The Pussyfoot,
by Frederik Pohl. Published by Ballantine in 1966 Additional resources -
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Compare to the to the high tech trash can from Islands in the Net (1988) by Bruce Sterling and the Robot Trash Collectors from The Velvet Glove (1956), by Harry Harrison
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Tech news articles related to The Age of The Pussyfoot
Tech news articles related to works by Frederik Pohl
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Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
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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.'
