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"A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content."
- Theodore Sturgeon
 |
| Robot Crab | ||
| An automated gardener. |
Every passage from this award-winning novel has a sort of lyrical beauty, even when describing common objects.
| It was Sunday afternoon and he stood with Molly in a sort of courtyard. White boulders, a stand of green bamboo, black gravel raked into smooth waves. A gardener, a thing like a large metal crab, was tending the bamboo... The robot crab moved toward them, picking its way over the waves of gravel. Its bronze carapace might have been a thousand years old. When it was within a meter of her boots, it fired a burst of light, then froze for an instant, analyzing data obtained... The crab had altered course to avoid her, but she kicked it with a smooth precision, the silver boot-tip clanging on the silver carapace. The thing fell on its back, but the bronze limbs soon righted it. |
| Technovelgy from Neuromancer,
by William Gibson. Published by Phantasia Press in 1984 Additional resources -
|
The problem of enclosing a power source, mechanics for movement and functionality, sensors and a brain to interpret sensory input is a difficult one. One solution used is to have the robot pause to consider its data.
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 farmer from The Turning Wheel (1954) by Philip K. Dick, 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 and the agricultural robot pest controller from Runaway (1985) by Michael Crichton.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Neuromancer
More Ideas
and Technology by William Gibson
Tech news articles related to Neuromancer
Tech news articles related to works by William Gibson
Robot Crab-related
news articles:
- ThereminVision Sensor: Robot Proximity Detection
- AgBots: Agricultural Robots Take The Field
- Robot Crab: Crustacean Clockwork Automata
- Hexbug Robot Crab
- Robot Motion Planning 10K Times Faster
| GITAI R1 Lunar Rover Like NASA Robonaut Centaur |
| Meshworm Soft Robot, With Peristaltic Crawling, Is Getting Better |
| Mushroom 'Robot' Is Just A Start |
| Biohybrid Robot Combines Living Muscle With Artificial Materials |
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'...waldoes in the screen followed in exact, simultaneous parallelism.'
'Seen close it was not completely flexible, but made instead of pivoted and smoothly finished segments.'
'...great rectangular slabs of muscle, slung into a rectangular frame.'
'If the biological robots were not living creatures, they were certainly very good imitations.'
"Everybody and his dog, it seemed, wanted to live out in the country; transportation and communication were no longer isolating factors."
'... the new typewriter that could be talked to, and which transposed the spoken sound into typed words.'
