Gearheads : The Turbulent Rise of Robotic Sports [Paperback]

Brad Stone (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 2003

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

From Publishers Weekly

Casual fans of Comedy Central's Battlebots (fights between human-size robots) will be shocked at the Machiavellian intrigue behind the scenes of the radio-controlled robotic warfare. Newsweek journalist Stone's original and surprisingly engaging account of the rise of "robotic sport" depicts a world hardly anyone not passionate about these gladiatorial gear fests would have ever suspected. And yet all the elements of a taut thriller (or pro wrestling championship) are here: paranoid geeks, rabid lawyers, killer machines, violent threats worthy of Belfast paramilitaries, and the startling revelation that kids who go to MIT are just as devious and twisted as the rest of us. Even the guy who destroyed Run-DMC's career puts in a key appearance. Stone manages to find the universal elements in a story most people not intimately familiar with Robot Wars can appreciate, and he lets those elements do the heavy lifting. Let the gear heads worry about gyroscopes and such: the real entertainment for the rest of us is the conniving and betrayal. The layperson will be fascinated not so much by engine technology as by the unique opportunity to watch a sport in its nascent stages develop rapidly from slightly obsessive leisure pursuit to corporate entertainment industry. Stone phrases his tale within a context accessible to all readers, with plenty for the genuine propeller heads to chew on as well.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Original edition (March 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743229517
• ISBN-13: 978-0743229517
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,595,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rock 'em, Sock 'em Robots. And Litigants., April 11, 2003

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gearheads : The Turbulent Rise of Robotic Sports (Paperback)

We celebrate athletes of strength, agility, and skill. We do not celebrate nerds, who not only do not win, but do not compete. As the twentieth century was closing, though, nerds who had a special fascination for electromechanical gadgets had a previously impossible sport in which to show creativity, cunning, and a killer instinct. "Gearheads" these particular nerds were called, and their games were played under the names of "Robot Wars," "Battlebots," "Robotica" and others. While it remains to be seen if this revolutionary form of competition will be long-lasting, the sport has had a colorful beginning and plenty of people interested in it as spectacle. _Gearheads: The Turbulent Rise of Robotic Sports_ (Simon & Schuster) by Brad Stone is a funny, sad, and weird account of how these metal crunching monsters compete, and how greed and litigation ruins dreams.

It is important to realize that the robots described herein are not necessarily machines that we would think of as robots. The gearheads' robots are manipulated by a controller in the same way that hobbyists operate radio controlled cars. But for competition, RC Car Joust didn't sound nearly as good as Robot Wars, and so the inventor of this competition, Marc Thorpe, expanded the definition. He was interested in starting a commercial venture that would give his family a sound future, and had been intrigued with machines that did performance art and some primitive mechanical jousting. Unfortunately for Thorpe, he had to find a backer. His partner, Steve Plotnicki, surely had the money; he was a record executive who had been responsible for such acts as the seminal rappers Run DMC. The eager but naïve Thorpe didn't check much into Plotnicki's record, which included vituperative litigation against his former stars. _Gearheads_ is largely about the legal battles that followed, and they are as vicious as any of the buzz saw, pneumatic ram, and knife battles that took place in the Robot Wars ring. The legal battles are long, and sad, but more entertaining are the description of the gearheads themselves, and the way they participated in a hobby that turned into an obsession for many of them. One of them says, "The thrill is hard to describe. It's better than fishing, a whole lot better than baseball. It's fighting and it's not fighting. It's just boys at play."

Along the way, Stone describes the decades of violent and very noisy, not to mention illegal, robotic performance art spectacles arranged by Mark Pauline and his Survival Research Laboratories. Pauline was much more interested in the dadaism of destruction (and troublemaking in general) than in rule-bound competition. Also here are Woody Flowers, the MIT teaching genius who teamed up with Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, to start FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), robot competition for high schoolers that stressed cooperation as much as competition (and thereby seems to have lost much of its entertainment punch). Combining portraits of some very peculiar inventors, a troubling tale of lost fortunes and litigation, and amazing descriptions of battles between Spiny Norman, Blendo, Biohazard, Thor, Ziggo, Ginsu, Mechadon, and others, _Gearheads_ is fine entertainment, and might be an important documentation of a new sport's genesis.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Turbulent Rise Indeed, September 17, 2003

By 

Kelly T. Lockhart (Chattanooga, TN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gearheads : The Turbulent Rise of Robotic Sports (Paperback)

A fascinating and often depressing look at how robotic combat moved from the hobbyists and performance artists into the world of courtrooms and television deals, and how greed and mismanagement almost killed the sport before it had begun.

The book also tells the story of the builders, who were often unaware of the whole story and only wanted to to build and compete with the best robots they could build.

And it's a story of a community that exists to this day. Of people with vision who still see bright future for robotic sports.

But most of all, it's a fascinating warts-and-all look into the people who brought robotic combat to the mainstream audience. The decisions that were made, the court battles that were fought, the robots that were built, and the triumphs and disappointments of everyone involved.

The only downside of the book is that it focuses almost exclusively on the big events. Maybe in a followup book, Brad (or someone else) will take a longer look at the many other smaller scale competitions that are held all around the country, and the regional organizations that are popping up as then robotic community continues to grow.

But, it's a minor quibble and I can heartily recommend the book as a great place to start learning about one of the very few sports that rewards intelligence over brute strength.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great read, March 2, 2003

By 

theron (san francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gearheads : The Turbulent Rise of Robotic Sports (Paperback)

Great, quick, fascinating read.
I was expecting a story about the niche of robot wars. But this book turned out to have a broader scope, detailing a compelling story about the culture and business behind the world of entertainment. The book has several vivid characters who seem to lose all perspective in their passion to get a piece of the action when robot battles start to take off. What's cool about that is that Stone has witnessed this from the inception of a new entertainment phenomenon. But I was left wondering if there are some universal truths here about the greed that attends entertainment dealings.
But I also didn't feel like the book shoved its point of view down my throat. It drew me in, told me a story, and laid out a lot information, but let me reach my own conclusions about who was right, and what went wrong.
One bit of subtlety I particularly appreciated pertained to the media's role in this whole story. The robot makers -- and promotors of robot battles -- are consistently asked by the media if they are promoting violence through their robots. But the real battles were taking place between human beings using the courts to take control of the sport. Indirectly, it nicely showed what a red herring it can be to blame entertainment for promoting conflict, when we have so much unecessary fighting going on on the sidelines. robots don't kill people, lawyers do.