The heavens have gained one of our brightest stars-Dr. Allen Hobby is dead. The man known to many simply as "The Visionary" died yesterday in the crash of ill-fated amphibicopter flight HNW.4123 over the western Atlantic Ocean, not far from the Bermuda Spires. He was ninety-nine years old.

Born in 2043 in Maine, Allen Hobby spent little time in childhood. He was home schooled by his parents and entered Bangalore World University (BWU) at the tender age of thirteen. Bypassing the normal undergraduate curriculum, Dr. Hobby had attained his doctorate, and accepted a tenure-track position at Dartmouth, by the time he was twenty-one.

In 2070, the Aragon Institute of Technology (AIT) managed to coax Hobby away from Dartmouth. There, at AIT's main Zaragoza campus, Hobby solidified his reputation as one of the world's pre-eminent AI researchers. In an academic career spanning more than twenty years, Professor Hobby laid the theoretical foundations for most of the underlying framework that makes today's sentient beings possible. He also taught and inspired the next generation of top-flight AI researchers; and through his protégés he and his works live on.

In 2090, one of the world's leading manufacturers of specialized simulacra robots, "mecha," gave Hobby the chance to turn his theories into reality. Cybertronics of New Jersey offered Hobby resources far beyond what any university chair could muster to build the research and development department of his dreams. Accepting the challenge, Hobby and his crack research team set up shop in and around the then-ruined Rockefeller Plaza. There they developed and created the "Evolving Intelligence" AIs that we are all familiar with today. More than any other researcher, Dr. Hobby drove the field of AI emotion and motivation design. In recent years, his training has created a phalanx of gifted researchers to ensure that Cybertronics will remain the undisputed leader in artificial humanity.

In his later years, Dr. Hobby became an internationally known prophet. He frequently spoke and wrote on the significance and moral imperatives inherent in the relationship between man- and robotkind. Championing the genius of man and the masterwork AIs that humans have created, he preached optimistically about the future.

Dr. Hobby viewed the existence and universal use of artificial life as a "biochemechanical revolution" that would ultimately free humans from the corporeal restraints of everyday life. He saw robots as warm, familiar, and loyal friends capable of providing their creators with everything from hard labor and mundane chore-bearing to unselfish companionship. Claiming that the proliferation of AIs would give every human the time and resources to exercise what he called the "artist/creator within," Dr. Hobby sought to allay the fears of humans uncertain about their place in an increasingly alien and complex future. He felt that, just as agriculture gave mankind the freedom and time to create civilization, AIs would give each individual human the freedom and time to reach his or her full creative potential.

Allen Hobby will be ranked with the greatest scientists and thinkers of all time. Certainly, he will take his place with the greatest minds of our modern age of science and technology. His countless friends in and outside his beloved Cybertronics Corporation bid him a fond, grateful farewell. Archimedes, Sun Zi, Al-Kwarizmi, Newton, Chiagst and Barshak no doubt welcome him with open arms.

Note that this brief statement fails to do justice to Dr. Hobby's immense stature and legacy. Perhaps no treatise, however long and deep, can accomplish such a goal. Fortunately, we can try. Cybertronics Corporation will therefore issue a more thorough tribute to its beloved Visionary very soon. We ask that you please be patient and respectful regarding the slow but careful nature of its development.