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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Interactive Toy | ||
| A sophisticated computer concealed in some sort of toy, with a wireless connection to the Cloud |
| No baby pictures of Kate existed, but she had seen a photograph taken seven years ago when she first arrived at the Noland house. The three-year-old Kate stood alone, clutching Zeno. That meant they had known each other before she met the Nolands. Zeno was an Interactive Toy, but an IT wasn’t like a kite or a soccer ball. He was a harp seal with an artificial intelligence program that was linked to a database in the Cloud. Kate knew that Zeno was a computer stuffed into a plush toy, but he was also her best friend. When the sun was shining, they worked on their fort in the woods or played board games. At night, when the wind moaned and tried to push through cracks in the window frame, the seal told her elaborate stories.
Kate had seen fairy-tale movies with singing and dancing and a happy ending, but she preferred Zeno’s darker, older versions. In the original Cinderella, the wicked sisters went to the royal wedding and birds pecked out their eyes. In Snow White, the evil queen was forced to wear red-hot iron shoes and dance until she dropped dead. In the kid movies, people always had a reason for their actions, and they usually sang a song about the reason. In Zeno’s stories, people were either rich or poor, good or bad, and then they walked out of their house and had adventures. Earlier that year there was an IT Day at Kate’s school, and kids brought their toys to class. The new generation of Interactive Toys had eyes that blinked when they looked at you and mouths that moved when they talked. Zeno’s voice came from a little speaker in his chest, and his fake fur was matted and stained... |
| Technovelgy from Certainty,
by John Twelve Hawks. Published by Doubleday in 2026 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the robot baby from Life Everlasting (1934) by David H. Keller, the robotic infiltrator from Second Variety (1953) by Philip K. Dick, the robot brother from Brother Robot (1958) by Henry Slesar, the Purza the Pukha from The Rowan (1990) by Anne McCaffrey, and the artificial friend from Klara and the Sun (2021) by Kazuo Ishiguro.
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
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'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
