Explor­ing the World of Robots

Published Categorised as Book scans, Books, Popular Posts, Retro Stuff 5 Comments on Explor­ing the World of Robots
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I’ve had this book since forever. It was part of a set of educa­tion­al books that were a hand me down from my cous­in. The others in the set were pretty stand­ard, on topics like anim­al migra­tion or cars, but this one is a bit odd. The others in the set have long gone to the char­ity shop or anoth­er relat­ive, but I’ll always keep this book.

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Just so you know who it belongs to (Peter’s my cous­in)

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Break dancing and skate­board­ing combined. Aspir­ing to be the coolest kid in North London circa 1988. Prob­ably not succeed­ing. If you want to stalk my relat­ives in the late 80s, the phone number and address are 801-6134 and 118, Risley Ave, Totten­ham, London N17. Gener­ic suburb­an London.

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The Maid Without Tears. You can be as cruel as you like to your mech­an­ic­al servant, and it can’t cry or feel anything because it’s incap­able of doing so. Isn’t the future swell. Nice gold lurex dress and purple tights combo. I want one. Good ‘tache too.

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Severed robot head in gold lurex balaclava. Also, did you know robots in disguise are all around you, and you never real­ised? Cue para­noia. This book is pretty badly researched, this robot didn’t even exist. It was a costume for performers at trade shows.

The next few pages are full of stuff like the history of auto­matons and milit­ary robots, and pages trying to convince you that wash­ing machines, calcu­lat­ors and even ther­mo­stats are actu­ally excit­ing kinds of robots. (Nice try).

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Here’s the good stuff. In the future you sit around in your turtle­neck using a giant remote control to buy stuff while a shiny robot hoovers and your computer suggests the menu for today. Seeing what search sugges­tions google comes up with does not really want to let a computer suggest my menu for the day either. “Robot brain” makes me think of a giant mushy pink thing kept in a tub in the garage, with elec­trodes and cogs coming out of the walls into it. Quasar’s big clumsy thumb­less paws were clearly built for strangling. Treat him well.

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We had all the other books. They weren’t that inter­est­ing. The titles were always far better than the contents. “The Midnight World” was facts about owls and badgers and things, but the artwork was terrible.

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