Word: robotized
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Nearly as big as the U.S., this plateau is literally out of the world-on Venus. Though the perpetual cloud cover of the earth's nearest planetary neighbor has kept its surface tantalizingly hidden, Venus' veil is being lifted by a gifted robot. The Pioneer-Venus Or biter spacecraft has been circling the planet since December 1978, analyzing its atmosphere and scanning and rescanning its surface with radar. Last week NASA released the first renderings of these extraterrestial data, revealing a dramatic and awesome landscape still in the process of formation. Though 60% of the Venusian topography consists...
...Tatooine, and there's Princess Leia, that cosmic mankiller. There are Han Solo and his furry 8-ft. friend Chewbacca trying to get their beat-up old tub, the Millennium Falcon, to make the jump into hyperspace. And back, of course, are the Laurel and Hardy of the robot set, Artoo Detoo...
...some scenes Artoo Detoo is played by a real robot; but in closeups little Kenny Baker is the brain and motor within. Baker had a hard time moving that heavy tin can in Star Wars, and his new model Artoo Detoo was a big improvement; it was lighter and easier to push, and it did not have the bruising nuts and bolts the old model had inside. Unfortunately for Baker, he is fast becoming obsolete. The real robots were much smarter than they were in Star Wars, and they were able to do many action shots better than the Baker...
...other troubles as well last week: as a result of a federal jury verdict, the network and two co-defendants must pay Writer Harlan Ellison $285,000 for plagiarism of a script about a robot police officer. After Ellison's proposal was rejected, ABC and Co-Defendant Paramount Pictures collaborated on a similar production called Future Cop. The feisty Ellison was aware of the risks of such a suit. "It's a company town," he says. "You blow the whistle and you don't work." Writers, some of whom complain that networks and producers constantly appropriate their...
...opaque atmosphere, map distant sources of potent radiation emitted by previously unknown exotic astronomical objects; these are not merely passive probes like pioneering satellites that marked the dawn of the Space Age, but whole observatories remotely operated by teams of scientists, much like major ground-based telescopes. And robot spaceprobes navigate through the system of known planets, telemetring to Earth visible and invisible impressions of these totally new worlds...