ROBOTS

   The word "robot" first appeared in Karel CAPEK's play R.U.R. (1921; trans 1923), and is derived from the Czech robota (statute labour). Capek's robots were artificial human beings of organic origin, but the term is usually applied to MACHINES. Real-life assembly-line robots are adapted to specific functions, but in sf - where the term overlaps to some extent with ANDROIDS - it usually refers to machines in more-or-less human form.Machines which mimic human form date back, in both fiction and reality, to the early 19th century. The real automata were showpieces: clockwork dummies or puppets. Their counterparts in the fiction of E.T.A. HOFFMANN - the Talking Turk in "Automata" (1814) and Olympia in "TheSandman" (1816) - present a more verisimilitudinous image, and play a sinister role, their wondrous artifice being seen as something blasphemous and diabolically inspired. The automaton in Herman MELVILLE's "The Bell-Tower" (1855) has similar allegorical connotations.Early-20th-century works are markedly different. William Wallace COOK's A Round Trip to the Year 2000 (1903; 1925), which features robotic "mugwumps", and the anonymous skit Mechanical Jane (1903) are both comedies, as is J. Storer CLOUSTON's Button Brains (1933), a novel in which a robot is continually mistaken for its human model and which introduced most of the mechanical-malfunction jokes that remain the staple diet of stage and tv plays featuring robots. (Robots are the most common sf device used in drama because they can be so conveniently and so amusingly played by live actors; the tradition extends to recent times in Alan Ayckbourn's Henceforward (1988).)Early PULP-MAGAZINE stories about robots are generally ambivalent. David H. KELLER's "The Psychophonic Nurse" (1928) is a cooperative servant, but no substitute for a mother'slove. Abner J. Gelula's "Automaton" (1931) has lecherous designs on its creator's daughter and has to be destroyed. Harl VINCENT's "Rex" (1934) takes over the world and is about to remake Man in the image of the robot when his regime is overthrown. But the balance soon swung in favour of sympathy. The machines in Eando BINDER's "The Robot Aliens" (1935) come in peace but are misunderstood and abused by hostile humans; and saccharine sentimentality is also in the ascendant in "Helen O'Loy" (1938) by Lester DEL REY, in which a man marries the ideal mechanical woman, in "RobotsReturn" (1938) by Robert Moore WILLIAMS, in which spacefaring robots discover that they were created by humans and accept the disappointment nobly, in "Rust" (1939) by Joseph E. KELLEAM, which describes the tragic decline into extinction of mechanical life on Earth, in the anti-Frankensteinian parable "I, Robot" (1939) by Eando Binder, and in "True Confession" (1940) by F. Orlin TREMAINE and "Almost Human" (1941) byRay CUMMINGS, both of which feature altruistic acts of robotic self-sacrifice. Isaac ASIMOV claims to have invented his famous "Laws of Robotics" (see below) in response to a technophobic "Frankensteinsyndrome", but there is little evidence of one in the robot stories published around the time of "Strange Playfellow" (1940; vt "Robbie"). Robots are given higher status than mere humans in "Farewell to theMaster" (1940) by Harry BATES and "Jay Score" (1941) by Eric Frank RUSSELL, the first of a series later published as Men, Martians and Machines (coll of linked stories 1956).The system of ethics with which Asimov's POSITRONIC ROBOTS were hardwired was enshrined in 3 famous Laws (devised in discussions with John W. CAMPBELL Jr, whom Asimov insisted was their co-creator): (1) a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; (2) a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; (3) a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. The laws emerged from "Reason" (1941); "Liar" (1941) became the first of many Asimov stories whose plots involve the explication of odd robot behaviouras an unexpected consequence of them. In "Liar" (as in many others) the logical unravelling is accomplished by the "robopsychologist" Susan Calvin. The early stories in the series - collected in I, ROBOT (coll oflinked stories 1950) - culminated in "Evidence" (1946), in which a robot politician can get elected only by convincing voters that he is human, but does the job far better than the man he replaces. In C.L. MOORE's "No Woman Born" (1944) a dancer whose mind is resurrected in a robot bodyquickly concludes that the robot condition is preferable to the human. The robot servants who survive mankind in Clifford D. SIMAK's CITY (1944-52; fixup 1952) are the perfect gentlemen's gentlemen rather than mere slaves. One cautionary note was sounded by Anthony BOUCHER, whose stories "Q.U.R."and "Robinc" (both 1943 as by H.H. Holmes) champion "usuform robots" against anthropomorphous ones; the stated reasons are utilitarian, but Boucher's religious faith - he was a devout Catholic - may have influencedhis opinion. The most notable comic robot in pulp sf - outside the works of the prolific Ron GOULART, which are infested by logically malfunctioning robots of every conceivable variety, not exclusively with comic intent - is the narcissistic machine in Robots Have No Tails (1943-8; coll of linked stories 1952) by Henry KUTTNER (as Lewis Padgett).After 1945, when the atom bomb provoked a new suspicion of technology, attitudes to robots in sf became more ambivalent again. In 1947 Asimov published his first sinister-robot story, "Little Lost Robot", and Jack WILLIAMSON produced the classic "With Folded Hands", in which robot"humanoids" charged "to serve man, to obey, and to guard men from harm" take their mission too literally, and set out to ensure that no one endangers their own well being and that everyone is happy, even if that requires permanent tranquillization or prefrontal lobotomy. Many writers did not relinquish their loyalty to machines; Asimov and Simak remained steadfastly pro-robot, and Williamson relented somewhat in his sequel to "With Folded Hands", The Humanoids (1949) - although the ending of thenovel may have been suggested by John W. CAMPBELL Jr rather than being a spontaneous expression of Williamson's own technophilic tendencies - but most robot stories of the 1950s involve some kind of confrontation and conflict. Robots kill or attempt to kill humans in "Lost Memory" (1952) by Peter Phillips (1920-), "Second Variety" (1953) by Philip K. DICK, "Shortin the Chest" (1954) by Idris Seabright (Margaret ST CLAIR), "First to Serve" (1954) by Algis BUDRYS, The Naked Sun (1956) by Asimov and "MarkXI" (1957; vt "Mark Elf") by Cordwainer SMITH. The mistaken-identity motif takes on sinister or unfortunate associations in Asimov's "Satisfaction Guaranteed" (1951), Dick's "Impostor" (1953), Walter M. MILLER's "TheDarfsteller" (1955) and Robert BLOCH's "Comfort Me, My Robot" (1955). Robot courtroom dramas include Simak's "How-2" (1954), Asimov's "Galley Slave" (1957) and del Rey's "Robots Should Be Seen" (1958). Man-robot boxing matches are featured in "Title Fight" (1956) by William Campbell Gault, "Steel" (1956) by Richard MATHESON and "The Champ" (1958) by RobertPresslie. The robot is an instrument of judgement in "Two-Handed Engine" (1955) by Kuttner and C.L. MOORE. Black comedies involving robots include several stories by Robert SHECKLEY, notably "Watchbird" (1953) and "The Battle" (1954), although Sheckley's classic story in this vein was thelater "The Cruel Equations" (1971). One story which deviates markedly from the pattern is Boucher's Catholic fantasy "The Quest for St Aquin" (1951), in which a perfectly logical robot emulates Thomas Aquinas and deduces the reality of God; but in the main robot stories of the 1950s reflected profound anxieties concerning the relationship between Man and machine. Asimov's Caves of Steel (1954), which deals in some depth with its hero'santi-machine prejudices and his mechanized environment, brings this anxiety clearly into focus.As post-Hiroshima anxiety began to ebb away in the late 1950s, a more relaxed attitude to the robot became evident, humour and gentle irony coming to the fore in such stories as those in Harry HARRISON's War with the Robots (1958-62; coll 1962), Brian W.ALDISS's "But Who Can Replace a Man?" (1958), Fritz LEIBER's The Silver Eggheads (1961) and Poul ANDERSON's "The Critique of Impure Reason" (1962). The old sentimentality returned to the robot story in full force in Simak's "All the Traps of Earth" (1960), and soon reached new depths of sickliness in Ray BRADBURY's "I Sing the Body Electric!" (1969). The rehabilitation of the robot was completed by Barrington J. BAYLEY's study in robot existentialism, The Soul of the Robot (1974; rev 1976), and its sequel, The Rod of Light (1985), and by Asimov's "That Thou Art Mindful of Him" (1974) and "The Bicentennial Man" (1976), which took the robot'sphilosophical self-analysis to its logical conclusion, ending with the identification of the robot as a thoroughly "human" being. Asimov later set out to integrate his robot stories into the Future History of his Foundation series in such novels as THE ROBOTS OF DAWN (1983) and Robotsand Empire (1985); he also wrote a series of juvenile robot stories in collaboration with his wife Janet ASIMOV, begun with Norby the Mixed-Up Robot (1983), and lent his name to a series of SHARED-WORLD novels set inIsaac Asimov's Robot City, begun with Odyssey (1987) by Michael P. KUBE-MCDOWELL. Janet Asimov carried the family tradition forward in Mind Transfer (1988), which explores the possibilities of robot SEX alongside philosophical discussions of robotic "humanness". Other exercises in robot existentialism are featured in Sheila MACLEOD's Xanthe and the Robots (1977) and Walter TEVIS's angst-ridden Mockingbird (1980).Robot philosophyof a less earnest but cleverer kind is extensively featured in Stanislaw LEM's robotic fables, collected in The Cyberiad (coll 1965; trans 1974)and Mortal Engines (coll trans 1977). Robot RELIGION and MYTHOLOGY are featured in Robert F. YOUNG's "Robot Son" (1959), Roger ZELAZNY's "For a Breath I Tarry" (1966), Simak's A Choice of Gods (1972) and GordonEKLUND's "The Shrine of Sebastian" (1973). The integration of the robot into human religious culture is celebrated in Robert SILVERBERG's "Good News from the Vatican" (1971), about the election of the first robot pope.Some humans, at least, are prepared to fight for the freedom of ex-colonial robots in James P. HOGAN's Code of the Lifemaker (1983). The awkward question of whether one would let one's daughter marry a robot is squarely addressed in Tanith LEE's The Silver Metal Lover (1982), and the problems of an orphaned robot trying to get by in a puzzling and hostile world are hilariously displayed in RODERICK (1980) and Roderick at Random (1983) by John T. SLADEK. The homicidal robot, although an endangeredspecies, has not quite become extinct: a robot executioner is featured in Roger Zelazny's "Home Is the Hangman" (1975) and a robot psychopath whose"asimov circuits" have failed is the antihero of Sladek's Tik-Tok (1983). The killer-robot, however, made its most successful comeback during the 1980s and 1990s in movies rather than books (CINEMA for listing of examples). The "paranoid android" Marvin (actually a robot), with his "brain the size of a planet", is a major character in the various versionsof Douglas ADAMS's Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy saga, and for a time attained cult-hero status. The writer whose work confirms the identification of Man and robot most strongly is Philip K. Dick, who usually preferred the term "android". His most notable stories using humanoid machines to address the question of what the word "human" can or should mean are DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? (1968), "The Electric Ant" (1969) and We Can Build You (1969-70; 1972). "Someday," he said inhis essay "The Android and the Human" (1973), "a human being may shoot a robot which has come out of a General Electrics factory, and to his surprise see it weep and bleed. And the dying robot may shoot back and, to its surprise, see a wisp of gray smoke arise from the electric pump that it supposed was the human's beating heart. It would be rather a great moment of truth for both of them." This irony is explored in the character Jonas, in Gene WOLFE's The Book of the New Sun (1980-83), a robot whogradually acquires human prostheses.Anthologies of robot stories include The Robot and the Man (anth 1953) ed Martin GREENBERG, The Coming of theRobots (anth 1963) ed Sam MOSKOWITZ, Invasion of the Robots (anth 1965) ed Roger ELWOOD, and The Metal Smile (anth 1968) ed Damon KNIGHT. Science Fiction Thinking Machines (anth 1954) ed Groff CONKLIN has a section on robots.

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   See also: AUTOMATION; COMPUTERS; CYBERNETICS; CYBORGS; INTELLIGENCE; TECHNOLOGY.