The first story in Poul Anderson's Cold Victory (New York, 1982), "Quixote and the Windmill," confirms the picture of a utopian economy, helped by the literary device of the pathetic fallacy:
the first robot, i.e., "...independent, volitional, nonspecialized machine..." (p. 16);
green hills;
sunlight flashing off polished metal;
a bright summer sky;
sunlit fields;
groves dancing in the wind;
widely distributed, self-servicing houses;
a large, almost automatic food factory;
quiet, self-piloting carplanes;
sun-tanned people in loose bright clothes;
a colorist with a new chromatic harmony;
a composer with an omniplayer;
engineers in a transparent laboratory;
short work periods;
most people at recreation most of the time;
a picnic, a dance, a concert and children at play;
oldsters in hammocks enjoying beer and books;
live talent preferred to TV;
a gardened, colonnaded tavern with autodispensors and two drunk men;
we are about to learn what can go wrong...
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