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List of fictional robots and androids

This list of fictional robots and androids is chronological, and categorised by medium. It includes all depictions of robots, androids and gynoids in literature, television, and cinema; however, robots that have appeared in more than one form of media are not necessarily listed in each of those media. This list is intended for all fictional computers which are described as existing in a humanlike or mobile form. It shows how the concept has developed in the human imagination through history.

"Maschinenmensch" from the 1927 film Metropolis. Statue in Babelsberg, Germany.

Robots and androids have frequently been depicted or described in works of fiction. The word "robot" itself comes from a work of fiction, Karel Čapek's play, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), written in 1920 and first performed in 1921.

Theatre

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For robots produced for entertainment in the eighteenth century, see Automaton § Modern automata.
  • Coppélia, a life-size dancing doll in the ballet of the same name, choreographed by Marius Petipa with music by Léo Delibes (1870)
  • The word robot comes from Karel Čapek's play, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), written in 1920 in Czech and first performed in 1921. Performed in New York 1922 and an English edition published in 1923. In the play, the word refers to artificially created life forms.[1] Named robots in the play are Marius, Sulla, Radius, Primus, Helena, and Damon. The play introduced and popularized the term "robot". Čapek's robots are biological machines that are assembled, as opposed to grown or born.

Literature

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See also: Robots in literature

19th century and earlier

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Early 1900s

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1920s

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  • R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) (1921), by Karel Čapek – credited with coining the term "robot". In its original Czech, "robota" means forced labour, and is derived from "rab", meaning "slave." R.U.R. depicts the first elaborate depiction of a machine take-over. Čapek's robots can also be seen as the first androids: they are in fact organic.
  • Gaston Leroux's 1923 La Poupée Sanglante (The Bloody Doll) and La Machine à Assassiner (The Murdering Machine). The lead character, Bénédict Masson, is wrongly accused of murder and guillotined. His brain is later attached to an automaton created by scientist Jacques Cotentin, and Masson goes on to track and punish those who caused his death.
  • Le Singe (The Monkey) (1925), by Maurice Renard and Albert Jean, imagined the creation of artificial lifeforms through the process of "radiogenesis", a sort of human electrocopying or cloning process.
  • The Metal Giants (1926), by Edmond Hamilton, in which a computer brain who runs on atomic power creates an army of 300-foot-tall robots.
  • Metropolis (1927), by Thea von Harbou, adapted by Fritz Lang on film, featuring character Maria and her robot double.
  • Automata (1929), by S. Fowler Wright, about machines doing the humans' jobs before wiping them out.

1930s

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1940s

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1950s and 1960s

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  • Astro Boy, series by Osamu Tezuka (published in Japan but available in English), an atomic-powered robot of 100,000 horsepower built to resemble a little boy, most specifically Tobio, the deceased son of Dr. Tenma. When not in school, Astro Boy spent his time dealing with robots & aliens. (1952)
  • The Gallegher series of stories by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore) collected in Robots Have No Tails (1952)
  • The Mechanical Hound from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
  • Bors, an old government integration robot pivotal to Philip K. Dick's novelette The Last of the Masters (1954)
  • The Fury, a large steel robot that acts as jailer and executioner, in Henry Kuttner's "Two-Handed Engine" (1955)
  • Zane Gort, a robot novelist in the short story "The Silver Eggheads" by Fritz Leiber (1959)
  • SHROUD (Synthetic Human, Radiation OUtput Determined) and SHOCK (Synthetic Human Object, Casualty Kinematics), the sentient test dummies in the novel V. by Thomas Pynchon (1963)
  • Frost, the Beta-Machine, Mordel, and the Ancient Ore Crusher in Roger Zelazny's short story "For a Breath I Tarry" (1966)
  • Trurl and Klapaucius, the robot geniuses of The Cyberiad (Cyberiada, 1967; translated by Michael Kandel 1974) – collection of humorous stories about the exploits of Trurl and Klapaucius, "constructors" among robots
  • The Iron Man in the novel The Iron Man: A Children's Story in Five Nights by Ted Hughes, illustrated by Andrew Davidson (1968), later changed to The Iron Giant to avoid confusion with its predecessor, the comic superhero of the same name
  • Roy Batty, Pris, Rachael and several other Nexus-6 model androids. "Androids, fully organic in nature – the products of genetic engineering – and so human-like that they can only be distinguished by psychological tests; some of them don't even know that they're not human." – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968)
  • "The Electric Grandmother" in the short story of the same name, from I Sing the Body Electric by Ray Bradbury (1969), based on a 1962 Twilight Zone episode of the same name
  • Mech Eagles from the novel Logan's Run (1967), robotic eagles designed to track and kill people who refuse to die at age 21
  • Richard Daniel, an intensely loyal, old, un-remodeled robot, belonging to one family for generations, in "All the Traps of Earth" by Clifford Simak. When the last of his entire extended family of owners died, after 200 years, he is required by law to be disassembled; humans who made the law are still threatened by robots who are superior to them in functionality. He is sentient enough to take exception to that policy.
  • Jenkins, the robot who served generations of the Webster family for nearly a thousand years, then the dogs modified by one of the Websters, dogs capable of reading and speech, who inherited the earth when humans left it by various methods, through all of the stories contained in the collection "City" by Clifford Simak. Humans entered "the sleep", or had their bodies converted to Jovian lifeforms to live on Jupiter.

1970s

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1980s

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1990s

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2000s

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  • Cassandra Kresnov, in a series by Joel Shepherd (2001)
  • Clunk, in a series by Simon Haynes (2004)
  • Moravecs, sentient descendants of probes sent by humans to the Jovian belt, in Dan Simmons' Ilium (2003)
  • Canti, one of the robots built by Medical Mechanica in FLCL (2003)
  • Nimue Alban/Merlin Athrawes, in the Safehold series by David Weber (2007)
  • Otis, the robot dog from Tanith Lee's Indigara (2007)
  • Freya, in Charles Stross' Saturn's Children (2008)
  • HCR-328 and Tom in Automatic Lover and Automatic Lover – Ten Years On by Ariadne Tampion (2008)
  • Boilerplate, a Victorian-era robot in the illustrated coffee-table book Boilerplate: History's Mechanical Marvel, published by Abrams (2009)

2010s

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2020s

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  • Automata in The Automation, made by the Greco-Roman god Vulcan.
  • Klara, the “Artificial Friend” narrator of Klara and the Sun (2021)
  • Crimson, a robot butler hunting the main characters and is the main antagonist in The Mystery at Crimson Mansion (2023)

Radio

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Music

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Film

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Pre-1950

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Italian film The Mechanical Man (1921), a movie which shows a battle between robots

1950s

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1960s

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1970s

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1980s

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1990s

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2000s

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2010s

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2020s

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Television films and series

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1960s and earlier

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1970s

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1980s

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1990s

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2000s

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2010s

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Comics

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Comic books/graphic novels

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American

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British

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Other European

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  • Otomox, the self-proclaimed "Robot Master" by André Mavimus (writer) and Roger Roux (artist) (1943)[7]
  • RanXerox, a mechanical creature made from Xerox photocopier parts, by Italian artists Stefano Tamburini and Tanino Liberatore; first appeared in 1978, in Italian, in the magazine Cannibale

South American

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Manga (Japanese comics)

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Comic strips

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  • Robotman (1985) in the comic strip of the same name, which eventually became "Monty". Robotman left the strip and found happiness with his girlfriend Robota on another planet.

Web comics

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Web-based media

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  • Stella 4D, a.k.a. Manager 45, on GO Moonbase;[9] first appears in episode 26

Animated shorts/series

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Machinima

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  • Lopez, Church and Tex, characters from the Rooster Teeth machinima Red vs. Blue. Only Lopez is a true artificial life-form, as both Church and Tex existed only as ghosts ( later in the series through solid proof showed that they both are AI programs like O'Malley the whole time ). Both characters were blown up during the course of the series, existing from that point onward in robot bodies other than their originals. They possess mechanical bodies similar to Lopez in design.

Podcasts

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  • Little Button Puss, character from Episode #310 of the Comedy Bang! Bang! podcast, played by John Gemberling. Little Button Puss, a.k.a. HPDP69-B, is a promotional robot built by Hewlett-Packard and is the first ever robot created with a fully sentient artificial intelligence, personality, and speaking function. It was designed by HP engineers for the express purpose of sexually pleasing humans. Comedy Bang! Bang! host Scott Aukerman was sent Little Button Puss as part of a promotional advertising campaign for the line of sex-robots. Little Button Puss looks like a metal dog, and has small flesh patches where its genitals are. Elsewhere, it's described as having the appearance of "nickel blue, gun metal". It is verified in the episode that Scott Aukerman lustily removed Little Button Puss' retractable genitals, threw them in a trash can, and then proceeded to use the HPDP69-B for its intended purpose. Afterwards, according to Comedy Bang! Bang! official canon, Aukerman looked back on the incident with shame. A complaint about the HPDP69-B is that for a sex-robot, "it looks too much like a metal dog". In a brief look into its past, Little Button Puss recounts an old romantic relationship with its long lost love, United Flight 93, who "died in the September 11th attacks".[14]
  • The Co-Host 3000 (later Sidekick 3000), character from the Spill and Double Toasted podcasts, voiced by Tony Guerrero.

Computer and video games

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See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ Long, Tony (25 January 2011). "Jan. 25, 1921: Robots First Czech In". Wired.com. Archived from the original on 18 May 2017. Retrieved 5 June 2017.
  2. ^ Hitchcock, Susan Tyler (2007). Frankenstein: A Cultural History. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 121. ISBN 978-0-393-06144-4.
  3. ^ "SFE: King and the Mockingbird, The". sf-encyclopedia.com.
  4. ^ "The Jetsons". Tulsa World. 19 May 1989. p. 42. Archived from the original on 21 January 2024. Retrieved 21 January 2024 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. ^ Greenberger, Robert (2008), "G. I. Robot", in Dougall, Alastair (ed.), The DC Comics Encyclopedia, New York: Dorling Kindersley, p. 134, ISBN 978-0-7566-4119-1, OCLC 213309017
  6. ^ "Fight Evil with Evil". Archived from the original on 13 May 2012. Retrieved 12 April 2012.
  7. ^ Otomox Archived 14 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine at http://www.coolfrenchcomics.com Archived 16 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  8. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 17 October 2007. Retrieved 12 July 2005.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  9. ^ "GO Moonbase". Archived from the original on 13 January 2009.
  10. ^ The Homestar Runner Enters the Longest Page Title on the Website Contest! Archived 23 June 2016 at the Wayback Machine at http://www.homestarrunner.com Archived 26 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ Homestarloween Party Archived 25 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine at http://www.homestarrunner.com Archived 26 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine
  12. ^ Compy 386! Archived 20 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine at http://www.homestarrunner.com Archived 26 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine
  13. ^ "Andrew Kauervane". Archived from the original on 25 February 2012. Retrieved 12 April 2012.
  14. ^ "Little Button Puss, episode #310 of Comedy Bang Bang: The Podcast on Earwolf". Archived from the original on 16 January 2015. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  15. ^ "Bastion". Archived from the original on 4 March 2017. Retrieved 23 March 2017.
  16. ^ "Bastion". Archived from the original on 1 April 2017. Retrieved 23 March 2017.
  17. ^ "ModTheSims – Servo from The Sims 2". Mod The Sims. Retrieved 8 February 2021.
  18. ^ "ModTheSims – Servo – Complete Conversion". Mod The Sims. Retrieved 8 February 2021.
  19. ^ "Space Channel 5 Part #2 – Space Channel 5 Profiles – Courtesy of Evila!". lparchive.org. Retrieved 18 November 2021.
  20. ^ "Space Channel 5 Part #3 – Space Channel 5 Part 2 Profiles". lparchive.org. Retrieved 18 November 2021.
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