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"All fiction is propaganda, and the fiction we like is the propaganda we believe in, and the fiction we don't like is the propaganda we don't believe in."
- Samuel R. Delany
 |
| Disinto | ||
| A disintegrating ray. |
Robot AL-76 was created to take on one job - running a Disinto on the moon. The farmers of Hannaford County, Virginia were surprised to meet him.
| There exists no adequate description of what occurred afterwards, in spite of the presence of seventy witnesses... ...AL-76 pulled a switch. The Disinto worked, and seventy-five trees, two barns, three cows and the top three quarters of Duckbill Mountain whiffed into rarefied atmosphere... |
| Technovelgy from Robot AL-76 Goes Astray,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by Ziff-Davis in 1941 Additional resources -
|
This story is a lot of fun to read; you can find it in The Complete Robot.
For a similar device, see the Wunderland Treatymaker from Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven.
(Thanks to Randy for pointing this one out.)
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'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
