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"Science fiction operates a little bit like science itself, in principle. You've got thousands of people exploring ideas, putting forth their own hypotheses. Most of them are dead wrong; a few stand the test of time; everything looks kind of quaint in hind"
- Peter Watts
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| Mechanical Tune-Maker | ||
| An electromechanical device that created unique music. |
| The place was cool and dark. A few men and women were at the bar; the rest sat around tables. Some youths were playing throw in the back. A mechanical tune-maker wheezed and composed in the corner, a shabby, half-ruined machine only partially functioning... The drink mixer had long since fallen apart. Only wine and beer were served. No living man knew how to mix the simplest drink. |
| Technovelgy from Last of the Masters,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Orbit Science Fiction in 1954 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the robot music described in The Robot God (1941) by Ray Cummings, the meloderge from Saboteur of Space (1944) by Robert Abernathy and the computer-created dub from Neuromancer by William Gibson.
See also the verse transcriber from Studio 5, The Stars, a 1971 short story by JG Ballard. Also, consider the Darkdawn city from Dying of the Light, a 1977 novel by George RR Martin.
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'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
