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"What has allowed so many Psychopathic Personalities to rise so high in corporations and government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 |
| 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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More Ideas
and Technology from The Killing Machine
More Ideas
and Technology by Jack Vance
Tech news articles related to The Killing Machine
Tech news articles related to works by Jack Vance
Walking Fort-related
news articles:
- Walking House Ambles Away From Disaster
| Navy Deploys LaWS First Ship-Borne Laser |
| TrackingPoint Smart Rifle |
| Navy Shoots Down Drone, With Help From Dr. Benton Quest |
| DARPA's Upward Falling Payload Like Leinster's Wabbler |
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The tagger's dream - lie in bed while painting at a remote location.
'... as though a child should build from nursery blocks a fantastic shape which abruptly is filled with throbbing life.'
'... the immense, three-dimensional, minutely cubed model...'
