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"I believe in limited government, and the 20th century has been the century of government. The data is uniform. The government has failed at every single task it has set out to do, with the exception of waging war."
- Bart Kosko
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| Floating Robot | ||
| A robot that floats in mid-air. |
| There was something before him in the darkness — something hanging in mid-air in that Stygian gloom! The hair prickled erect on his scalp and his spine crawled. For there, before his aching eyes, a glow came up; a brilliant crimson glow, shot with silver flashes of incandescence. And its light revealed the most fantastic being Marshall had ever seen in any nightmare.
 ('The Floating Robot' by David Wright O'Brien) It was a nameless thing of gleaming red metal, perhaps five feet in height. It had a formless head, with odd projections that might have been eyes, but there were no eyes in them. It had metallic arms, terminating in almost human hands. It had no legs, but a round bottom almost ludicrously like an untippable salt cellar, ringed by a band of what seemed to be radioactive gold. And it floated effortlessly perhaps a foot above the floor... "I am Yolan," repeated the monster, rather querulously. "What is this world? Why have I been trapped in this dark place? I am Yolan. I am Yolan." |
| Technovelgy from The Floating Robot,
by David Wright O'Brien. Published by Fantastic Adventures in 1941 Additional resources -
|
Fans of Star Trek: The Original Series might recognize this robot:
Here's the cover for Fantastic Adventures for January, 1941.
('The Floating Robot' by David Wright O'Brien)
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Timeline
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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.'
