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"What we're doing pop culturally is like burning the rain forest. The biodiversity of pop culture is really, really in danger."
- William Gibson
 |
| Walking Fort | ||
| A biomimetic fort based on the model of a centipede. |
| He wanted Patch to design and construct a walking fort in the semblance of a monster centipede, seventy-six feet long and twelve feet high. The mechanism was to consist of eighteen segments, each equiped with a pair of legs. The fort... must be able to move at a speed of at least forty miles per hour on synchronized, smoothly operating legs. It must be able to spurt liquid fire from its tongue, exude noxious gas, and fire energy beams through ports in its head. |
| From The Killing Machine,
by Jack Vance. Published by Fantastic Fiction (?) in 1964 Additional resources -
|
Helpfully, the book also contains this excerpt from the specifications for the walking fort:
Thanks to R. Probert for contributing this item.
The vehicle must, under full load, be able to traverse slopes of up to forty degrees (assuming adequate footing) at a speed not less than ten miles per hour; to negotiate easily and certainly broken ground, such as a field of irregularly shaped rock fragments up to six feet in diameter; to pass across crevasses, gaps or ditches up to twenty feet wide.
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'The gas gave sufficient heat for the culinary apparatus...'
'He pressed hard with his tongue against his right upper first molar.'
'The prototype blue-bellied, gray-backed tracer-bird with the wide-angle eye...'
'See Vee Threepio - Vee for versatility - at your service...'
'Three and a half centimetres in diameter, permanently fixed in the centre of his forehead.'
