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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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| Rolem (Wrestling Robot) | ||
| A robotic wrestling companion. |
One of Earth's caretakers in This Immortal, by Roger Zelazny, is Konstantin Kharageosis, who also goes by Conrad (and various other names). Conrad stopped aging around thirty (hence the book title). At one point, Conrad goes slightly mad, and his companions set a robotic sparring partner upon him to keep him occupied.
| Off in the distance, I heard a scream. 'Stop it, Hassan, it's not supposed to do that!' Which meant that I was Conrad, and that I was in Egypt, and that the expressionless face before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature that could be set for five times the strength of a human being, and was probably so set, a creature which could be given the reflexes of an adrenalized cat, and doubtless had them in full operation. Only a golem wasn't supposed to kill, except by accident and Rolem was trying to kill me. |
| From This Immortal,
by Roger Zelazny. Published by Ace Science Fiction in 1966 Additional resources -
|
This novel is one of my favorites; it bears repeated reading, and is in no way dated nearly forty years after publication. Zelazny creates a remarkable fusion of past and future in This Immortal. He does a fabulous job of reverting Earth to the age of heroic Greek mythology, where people who live too close to "hot spots" have children with mutations that just might make them satyrs or other creatures of myth.
Here's a bit more detail about the wrestling robot:
Not surprisingly, this novel won the Hugo for best science fiction novel in 1966.
See the entry for robot, from R.U.R. by Karel Capek, who coined the word "robot."
A worthy opponent was the golem. Hasan had it programmed at twice the statistically-averaged strength of a man and had its reflex-time upped by fifty percent. Its memory contained hundreds of wrestling holds and its governor theoretically prevented it from killing or maiming its opponent - all through a series of chemelectric afferent nerve-analogues, which permitted it to gauge to an ounce the amount of pressure necessary to snap a bone or tear a tendon. Rolem was about five feet, six inches in height and weighed around two hundred fifty pounds...
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from This Immortal
More Ideas
and Technology by Roger Zelazny
Tech news articles related to This Immortal
Tech news articles related to works by Roger Zelazny
Rolem (Wrestling Robot)-related
news articles:
- HOAP-2 Robot Masters Sumo And Linux. RoboShiko!
- Robots Get Pressure-Sensitive Skin
- Amazing Robot Wrestling
- Arm Spirit Arm-Wrestling Arcade Game Rampage
- Robot Martial Arts Videos
- Robot Wrestler Vs. Human Wrestler Video
- Touch Sensor For Sensitive Robots
- E-Skin For Robots - And Maybe You
- Autonomous Sumo Robot Wrestling Video
- Soft Robots Use Kirigami Piezoelectric Sensor Skin
| Toy-Like Robot Well-Being Coaches Are The Best |
| Scent-Identifying Robot Uses Machine Learning |
| Robot Imagines Itself (Not The First Time This Has Happened) |
| Intelligent Trash Sorting By Robots Predicted Long Ago |
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With each successive print, our model needed to incorporate more structural ingredients to minimize print failures.
'... Wendis stared thoughtfully at the brilliant lines on the spectroscope screen.'
'A special spot-wavex scrambler also caused his televised image, in the area immediately about his lips, to mouth the vowels and consonants beautifully.'
'... it was as if the upper part had been removed, like a cut deck of cards.'
Sumomo will get those office workers into good shape!
'... who let their handbag computers carry all the conversation.'
'Thus it came about that the search for a planetiferous sun near a white dwarf star was not unduly prolonged...'
'He led me down the Hall of Portraits to the ego-likeness of the Duke Leto Atreides.'
