Gearheads : The Turbulent Rise of Robotic Sports
by Brad Stone
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Book Summary Information
Author: Brad StoneEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2003-03-10
ISBN: 0743229517
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Book Reviews of Gearheads : The Turbulent Rise of Robotic Sports
Book Review: Best Reference for Robotic Combat History
Summary: 5 Stars
Brad Stone's book is by far the most complete and informative work on the growth and development of robotic combat, from its beginnings as unorganized street fighting to television productions. As a late arrival to the sport, competing from 2000-2002, on all three shows Battlebots, Robotica and Robot Wars, I can attest to Brad's fair and unbiased reporting and am amazed at his absolutely thorough research on the subject. If robotic combat is a passing fad, 100 years from now, historians will use this book as part of the culture that defined the start of the new millennium. http://www.robotdojo.com
Summary of Gearheads : The Turbulent Rise of Robotic Sports
In the early nineties, a visionary special-effects guru named Marc Thorpe conjured a field of dreams different from any the world had seen before: It would be framed by unbreakable plastic instead of cornstalks; populated not by ghostly ballplayers but by remote-controlled robots, armed to the steely teeth, fighting in a booby-trapped ring. If you built it, they'd come all right....In Gearheads, Newsweek technology correspondent Brad Stone examines the history of robotic sports, from their cultish early years at universities and sci-fi conventions to today's televised extravaganzas -- and the turmoil that threatened the whole enterprise almost from the beginning.
By turns a lively historical narrative, a legal thriller, and an exploration of a cultural and technological phenomenon, Gearheads is a funny and fascinating look at the sport of the future today.
Newsweek reporter Brad Stone set out to chronicle the brief history of robotic sports, a genre peopled by a disparate range of mechanical compulsives spanning the education-driven idealism of Segway Human Transporter inventor Dean Kamen to the willfully enigmatic Mark Pauline's anarchic Survival Research Laboratories. But Stone's straightforward reporting quickly focuses on the tormented tale of Parkinson's afflicted, former ILM animator Marc Thorpe and his struggles to transform his obsession with battling machines into bona fide sport, efforts we learn have directly spawned such cult cable TV fare as Robot Wars, Battle Bots, and Robotica and made unlikely pop-culture heroes of its motley, proud band of mechanized warrior engineers. Thorpe's effusive mix of enthusiasm and naivete are at once his salvation and downfall, especially after he finds himself yoked financially with Priority Records founder Steve Plotnicki, an executive the author portrays as never meeting a business partner he didn't like to sue, and repeatedly.
Thus framed, what emerges is as much cautionary tale about the seemingly limitless bounds of human pettiness and the nettlesome business of copyrighting, branding, and marketing mass-media entertainment as it is hagiography of the gearheads and their beloved gladiators. Lawyers and lawsuits seem to dominate every third page, often overshadowing the exploits of legendary 'bots such as Biohazard and Blendo, and increasingly making the aloofness of gearhead godfathers Pauline and Kamen seem like so much common sense. --Jerry McCulley
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