Robots and androids…
Note from Steve to Cupid’s minions: Tomorrow is St. Valentine’s Day. Help guide the little cherub’s arrows (Cupid, not the saint) to their targets. Don’t disappoint your significant other. Fair warning!
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Czech writer Karel Čapek’s 1921 R.U.R. (“Rossum’s Universal Robots”) was the first story about robots (it introduced the word, in fact), published long before Isaac Asimov made robots and androids famous in his novels. They are good and bad guys in sci-fi and hated by union workers and everyone else who fear the loss of their jobs to automation. They’ve even become comedy figures: “Danger, danger, Will Robinson!”
I don’t have a good name for it (perhaps the psychiatrists who psycho-analyzed Donald J. Trump can help here), but there exists a phobia about robots. I’d guess androids have a worse rep—they look and often act too much like humans! Blade Runner, one of two of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made (the other is Alien), plays on that fear (so does Alien, in fact). (Maybe that’s why Hollywood shortened Phillip K. Dick’s title, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” to the ambiguous Blade Runner.) I, Robot, the movie that has little to do with Asimov’s story, almost made robots into evil Nazi mobs…or mechanical zombie hordes. Hollywood just loves to ruin good literature.
I have robots and androids in some of my sci-fi tales. Their roles are mostly to serve man (without the meaning of the classic short story “To Serve Man” by Damon Knight, which is about that other phobia, evil ETs). In fact, my AIs are a bit more iffy (HAL started that trend in 2001, I suppose, but redeemed itself in 2010, by far the better movie). There’s no reason an AI can’t be a demagogue that wants to be king and control an army of robots and androids to the detriment of human beings. US presidents shouldn’t have a monopoly on that.
But back to my oeuvre: From the automated bar at the beginning of Sing a Zamba Galactica to a rebel leader in Rogue Planet, my androids mostly work for humanity or are indifferent, neither bad nor evil. In a sense, the cyborgs in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries” (the “Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans,” or MECHs) are just androids with human brains (that might be a better solution than Asimov’s positronic brains)…and good guys too. Yet, to make robots and androids more human, I wanted to create some who can either be good or bad characters in a story.
As many of you know, my alter-ego A.B. Carolan is in charge of my YA sci-fi mysteries now. The latest entry, the third book in the “ABC YA Sci-Fi Mysteries” series, is titled Mind Games. That robot/android phobia is an important theme. As in most of my treatments of themes, A.B. covers both sides: There’s a good android, a cop (not all that different from Asimov’s Daneel Olivaw). There are bad androids too, but humans made them that way (that’s usually the case—someone writes the programs!). But the central question is a bit more than robot/android phobia: What could possibly go wrong if androids had ESP? (That’s another theme in A.B.’s book, of course.) Not even Data had ESP.
R.U.R.’s legacy will continue long into the future as sci-fi continues to use robots, androids, and AIs as characters, reflecting their importance for our future lives and well being. I’m not sure they’ll be equipped with ESP, but what if future soldiers are no longer human but invincible robots with ESP who can read the thoughts of their human adversaries? Now there’s a tale of military sci-fi for you that moves far beyond Terminator and I, Robot. (Maybe Trump will populate his Space Force with them around his fifth term?)
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Comments are always welcome!
Mind Games. In this third book in the “ABC YA Sci-Fi Mysteries” series, A.B. Carolan’s main character finds her adopted father murdered. She’d agreed to hide her ESP powers, but she breaks that promise to find his killer. The pursuit involves three planets and requires many friends who comes to her aid. In uncovering the extent and perpetrators of the conspiracy is a sci-fi thrill ride you won’t want to miss, whether you’re a young adult or an older sci-fi addict who’s young-at-heart. Available in print and ebook formats from Amazon, and in ebook format from Smashwords and all its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lenders and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.).
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
