Best Robot/Android and Cyborg Literature?

Athenry1972

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Hi. I'm a SF novice and would like to know, please, the best classics / serious literature / (light) entertainment on Robots/Androids and/or Cyborgs.
In particular, novels, but also, graphic novels.
Literature, for example, that contains general philosophical ideas behind robots/cyborgs and/or novels with very visual depictions of robots/cyborgs.
Anything you can think of, really.
Thanks.
 
Possibly an obvious starting point is Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel and I, Robot. Perhaps a bit dated these days, but definitely classics.

This sounds like a research project. Is there a particular reason behind your request?
 
There's Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". And also of interest might be "The Simulacra" and "We Can Build You".
 
Eric Frank Russell's collection, Men, Martians and Machines contains a series of linked stories that feature a favorite robot of mine. I don't want to say too much, though. It would be easy to spoil the stories.


Randy M.
 
I read L. P. Davies's The Artificial Man so many years ago that I can hardly say I am sure I did read it!

Is it good, doesn anyone know?
 
Robots: The Recent A.I. edited by Rich Horton & Sean Wallace

Just an FYI: I just recalled seeing this book at a bookstore. It's a recent release from Prime Books.


Randy M.
 
Before the good doctor penned the three laws of robotics, there was an awful lot of Frankenstinia in robot stories; the assumption that they would turn on mankind, either directly, or by rendering them obsolete (there's still an element of the latter surfacing from time to time). For cyborgs (historical) apart from the six million dollar man) try Pohl's "Man plus" or McCaffrey's "The Ship that sang" (of course Helga's a cyborg; where did you get the idea they had to be humanoid?)

Classical automatones go back to Greek myth, and, unlike Asimov's pacifistic creations, were often built for warfare (the ancient Greeks had possibly a clearer idea than Dr Asimov as to where research budgets were most healthy). However, I'm not certain they can be classified as science fiction, any more than the eastern european golems (direct ancestors of Capek's Universal Robots or workers).

The Artificial intelligence that turns them into more than just preprogrammed automated lathes? perhaps Harry Harrison/Marvin Minsy's "The Turing option".

Androids have, over the decades, been anything from humanoid robots, the only difference between them and their "designed to a purpose" bretheren being cosmetic, through synthetic life forms to beings genetically identical to humans, born from synthetic wombs. Most of the characters in Huxley's "Brave new world" would qualify for this definition, as well as Cherryh's azi (Cyteen, forty thousand in Gehenna).
 
Where to start is the hard bit. If you want some classic cold war evil robots controlling everything the Jack Williamson's The Humanoids. A more compelling and complex robot tale is probably Mockingbird by Walter Tevis. I personally love the Asimov stories and don't think Caves of Steel have dated at all. And you cannot go past Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Dick.
 
@Extoll @Toby @Randy @Gully and in particular @ChrisP

Thank you very much indeed for your replies, helping me to get going on something i know little about but which i need to research a bit for my book (fiction) about to start.

Best wishes
 
Cool thread, that Walter Tevis book sound very interesting.

Best android,robot book i have read is The Humanoids. Not read Robot stories by Asimov yet and Do Androids is not my fav PKD novel even if its good android book.
 
Conn, I assume a gumshoe fan like yourself has at least read the Lije Baley and R. Olivaw Daneel books by Asimov, particularly The Caves of Steel.

I got that book years ago from the library but the copy was too damaged so i couldnt read it. I have I,Robot collection and i must read Daneel series.

I have neglected Asimov for few years now because the last Foundation books after the original trilogy was disappointing and annoyed me since the first books was such big favs of mine.
 
Where to start is the hard bit. If you want some classic cold war evil robots controlling everything the Jack Williamson's The Humanoids. A more compelling and complex robot tale is probably Mockingbird by Walter Tevis. I personally love the Asimov stories and don't think Caves of Steel have dated at all. And you cannot go past Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Dick.

Thankyou so much for mentioning Mockingbird by Walter Tevis, perhaps one of the best books I've had the pleasure to read. Beautiful. Something we can all feel a connection to, the love of reading. Reminds me in parts of Flowers for Algernon in the way in which it develops this angle.
 
Nice thread! In research mode myself, and there's a lot of good info here.

If I may steal the thread for a minute and be more specific; would you guys happen to know, from the top of your heads, books/stories which have a humanoid robot/android who's not aware that it's artificial/designed/a machine?
 

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