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"I identify with the weak person; this is one reason why my fictional protagonists are essentially antiheroes."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| Robot Farmer | ||
| A humanoid robot used for agriculture. |
| Below his ship, the barren countryside spread out, ugly and bleak. Great red spots that hadn't yet been overgrown, and slag surfaces were still visible - but by this time most ruins were covered by soil and crabgrass. He could see men and robots farming; villages, countless tiny brown circles in the green fields; occasional ruins of ancient cities - gaping sores like blind mouths, eternally open to the sky. They would never close, not now. Ahead was the Detroit area, named, so it ran, for some now-forgotten spiritual leader... He dropped his ship down. An open field lay to his right; a robot farmer was plowing with a metal hook welded to its waist, a section torn off some discarded machine. It stopped dragging the hook and gazed up in amazement, as Sung-wu landed the ship awkwardly and bumped to a halt. "Clearness be with you," the robot rasped obediently, as Sung-wu climbed out. Sung-wu gathered up his bundle of reports and papers and stuffed them in a briefcase. He snapped the ship's lock and hurried off toward the ruins of the city. The robot went back to dragging the rusty metal hook through the hard ground, its pitted body bent double with the strain, working slowly, silently, uncomplaining. |
| Technovelgy from The Turning Wheel,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Science Fiction Stories in 1954 Additional resources -
|
See also the Farming of Trantor; after the fall of the city planet, the ruling center of the galaxy in Isaac Asimov's classic Foundation trilogy from the 1950's:
Trantor was a world in dregs and rebirth. Set like a faded jewel... it alternately dreamed of past and future...
Until the decay of the Empire eventually reached it... its drooping powers had been bent back upon themselves and broken forever. In the blasting ruin of death, the metal shell... wrinkled and crumpled into an aching mock of its own grandeur.
The survivors tore up the metal plating and sold it... for seed and cattle. The soil was uncovered once more and the planet returned to its beginnings. In the spreading areas of primitive agriculture, it forgot its intricate and colossal past.
Compare to the automatic cultivators from Piracy Preferred (1930) by John W. Campbell, the conscious farm machines from The Hidden Colony (1935) by Otfrid von Hanstein, the robot farm from Let Freedom Ring (1950) by Fritz Leiber, the field minder from Who Can Replace A Man (1963) by Brian Aldiss, the Robomule from Bill the Galactic Hero (1965) by Harry Harrison, the self-guided tractor from At the Bottom of a Hole (1966) by Larry Niven, the robot crab from Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson and the agricultural robot pest controller from Runaway (1985) by Michael Crichton.
(Farming Trantor in 'Second Foundation' by Isaac Asimov)
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Turning Wheel
More Ideas
and Technology by Philip K. Dick
Tech news articles related to The Turning Wheel
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
Robot Farmer-related
news articles:
- Rice-Planting Robots Rescue Japanese Farmers
- Prospero, Robotic Farmer
- Life In Detroit's 'Agrihood' - The First In The U.S.
- FarmBot, Your Personal Robotic Farmer
| Fully Electric, Fully Automated Vegetable‑growing Agribots |
| MK-V Smart Tractor - Fully Electric, Farmer Optional |
| Vertical Farm In Singapore's Output Is 1.5 Tons Per Day |
| Mashambas Skyscraper Farm Design Wins |
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'So, Ender, we will now begin your education.'
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
