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"in 1974 I experienced an invasion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind, as if I had been insane all my life and suddenly I had become sane."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| 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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| Multimode Directed Energy Armament System |
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Gerry was dubious. She had seen abortive attempts at paralysis rays before.
Let your fingers - uh - your robot do the walking. And hopping.
