Community Development Workshop

Items

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  The Wicked Cyborg

  The situation bore an alarming resemblance to the classic Gothic situation. But since it was taking place on the planet Esmeralda in the Barnum system, there were differences. There was a disputed inheritance -- an interplanetary robot-making business. There was the uncle who had taken charge, a cyborg now, fifty per cent human, fifty per cent machine, and one hundred per cent smiling deceit. There was the innocent young heir, the boy, Tad, in the clutches of this uncle and his sinister household. Even the weather was foggy and gloomy, and Tad could find no friend to help him from what seemed certain doom.That is until he stumbled upon the wreckage of the family's greatest engineering triumph, the super-robot Electro. With nothing better to do, he secretly repaired it. And then, once Electro was on his feet and ticking electronically away, wicked cyborg uncle -- watch out!
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  Algorithm

  The Novak Transformation had altered the very shape of the universe and left proud Earth an outcast, a sleazy pleasure-colony at the outer edge of the federation of planets "Way Up There." But the Federation must expand or die: first came the starship jammed with mercenaries from seven worlds; then came the Assassin... Algorithm.
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  The Tin Angel

  Start with medical transplants, add a dash of cybernetic engineering, and a talking dog can be commonplace. But Bowser was not commonplace--he was the top-rated star of 1999's television--comedian, commentator, actor, and temperamental headache of the media masters. But he was still a dog--man's best friend to the vast gaping audience of watchers, and a cur, mutt, and son of a five-letter-word to Bert Schenley, his agent and guardian. So when Bert got two assignments at once--both taking him and Bowser to the battle front in Lower California where the various guerrillas and rebels were making news, history and hysterics, it was the climax. Bowser was determined to keep on grabbing the headlines, Bert was determined to keep a grip on his own life, and the rest were equally set on blotting them both out.
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  Utopia 14

  Describes a future America in which computers solve all your problems, machines give you everything you need, and you are taken care of from cradle to grave by an industrial society.
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  Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said

  Jason Taverner wakes up one morning to find that he is no longer a famous television star but a complete unknown without even I.D. papers. He then finds out what it is like to be hunted by the whole apparatus of society.
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  The Cosmic Computer

  To the victor go the spoils -- and in the aftermath of a brutal and drawn-out war on the planet Poictesme, an agent is sent to hunt among the smoldering ruins for the most valuable prize of all: Merlin, the most powerful computer the universe has ever known. Will the mission be successful, or will the intrepid technology hunter come home empty-handed?
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  Computer War

  The odds were right for victory. The problem with computer warfare is that the computer is always logical while the human enemy is not - or doesn't have to be. And that's what the Betastani enemy were doing nothing that the Alphaland computers said they would. Those treacherous foemen were avoiding logic and using such unheard-of devices as surprise and sabotage, treason and trickery. They even had Alphaland's Deputy of Information believing Betastani propaganda without even realizing it. Of course he still thought he was being loyal to Alphaland, because he thought that one and one must logically add up to two. And that kind of thinking could make him the biggest traitor of them all.
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  Demon Seed

  The computer Proteus enslaves a human female in order to force her to bear his child.
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  Computerworld

  1984 was projected by Orwell to be the year of Big Brother and the time of Newspeak. But 1984 is at hand and Big Brother has assumed a different and more real form. Newspeak has been replaced by the new language of the programmers and computer microchips, and the prospects of the years to come now have a more sharply defined and less human form. Van Vogt, master of the innovative science fiction, has brought this vision of the days to come into focus with his new novel, the story of our world under the cold and emotionless eye of the almighty computers in conflict with the efforts of just flesh-and-blood people to achieve some way of asserting free will beyond the scope of mechanical programming.
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  Android Armageddon

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  We can build you

  They began as manufacturers of electronic mood organs and player pianos. Then they improved the line--they started building exact simulacra of famous men. They thought that people would pay a good price to have anyone they wanted made to order--to talk with, befriend, and eventually utilize f or any purpose they wanted. But they ran into trouble. For one thing an exactly programmed reconstruction of a famous man is going to be obstinate and as character-complex as the real man was--and nobody's puppet. For another, they got involved with a project for settling the moon with their creations. And finally they got tangled up with their own personal identities
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  The simulacra

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  Wildsmith

  The problems of modern living were getting Tom Miley down. It was bad enough that he had to make sure Wildsmith, the robot, didn't keep unscrewing and mailing his hands to female admirers, but when the writer-robot decided that he was, variously, Mark Twain, a raving drunk, a dog tamer and a sex maniac, Miley was ready to give up in despair. And then Miley and Worsmith went on tour-and the chaos really began!