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"I long ago realized that I could reach far more people by writing something, than by walking down the street with a banner."
- John Brunner
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| Counselor | ||
| An electronic source of advice for humans. |
| HER VOICE was quite steady the next morning as she asked the Counseling Office for a special appointment. Fifty credit-units extra for not waiting her turn, but what did that matter?
 (The Counselor from 'Throwback' by Miram Allen de Ford) The robot clerk in the waiting-room checked her number, then let her into the little room where the towering Counselor took up all of one wall. She shut the inward-locking door, peered through the one-way glass to watch the robot go back to its desk, and lay down on the long couch. The Counselor lighted up immediately. The mechanical voice repeated her number, indicating that her dossier was before it for reference, and recited the opening formula: “This is a confidential consultation lasting one hour. What is your problem?” The microfilm began to pour out from the slot into the plastic container in which she would carry it away afterwards. It was hard to begin. For a moment Kathrin had the embarrassing feeling that the Counselor was a human being, like the human psychoanalysts in ancient times she had read about. The voice had to reiterate: “What is your problem, please?” |
| Technovelgy from Throwback,
by Miriam Allen deFord. Published by Startling Stories in 1952 Additional resources -
|
Compare this device with the robot psyche tester from Colony (1953) by Philip K. Dick, Sigrid von Shrink from Gateway (1970) by Frederik Pohl, the mechanotherapist from Bad Medicine (a 1956 Robert Sheckley story), Dr. Smile, from Dick's 1964 novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
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'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
'It hurtled on down with inconceivable speed until it was visible as thousands of tiny robot planes...'
