Cool robots, androids, and cyborgs of Pre-Golden-Age SF

Joshua Glenn says:

My latest io9 post takes a look at the coolest robots, androids, and cyborgs of Pre-Golden-Age SF. These include: Tiktok the Mechanical Man of Oz. The biological "robots" (an original coinage) who rebel against their human masters in Karel Čapek's 1921 play, "R.U.R." Futura, the evil fembot star of Thea von Harbou's "Metropolis"; and Sola, a female android who refuses to kowtow to her lustful inventor. The Nyctalope, the first cyborg superhero, star of a series of French pulp novels from the 1910s-20s. And Professor Jameson, whose brain is transferred into a mechanical body 40 million years after his death, in a story that inspired Isaac Asimov's benevolent robots. PLUS: A complete list of 19th and early 20th-century fictional robots.

Cool robots, androids, and cyborgs of Pre-Golden-Age SF

Index to complete series

1. Introduction to Science Fiction's Pre-Golden Age (1904-33)

2. The 10 Best Apocalypse Novels of Pre-Golden Age SF

3. The Most Amazing Book Covers from Pre-Golden Age SF

4. The Coolest Robots of Pre-Golden-Age SF

• [Roy Trumbull]

  Asimov’s special contribution was the three laws of robotics which other Sci-Fi writers incorporated into their stories.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics

• [Anonymous]

  Fritz Lang directed Metropolis; his wife at the time, Thea Von Harbou co-wrote the script with him. However, possessive credit is usually given to the director, not the screenwriter.

• [bbum]

  Whoah. That dude robot looks exactly like Dad Robot from — I believe — a Disney channel cartoon of relatively recent vintage.

• [Gaudeamus]

  Kinda reminds me of Bigweld from the movie Robots with uh, more parts that aren’t big spheres.

  http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~amampett/robots/bigWeld_Roodney.jpg

• [Gaudeamus]

  That’s odd, I thought I posted already but…

  That robot looks like Bigweld from Robots, except with limbs.

  http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~amampett/robots/bigWeld_Roodney.jpg

• [Takuan]

  Tick Tock

• [Takuan]

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tik-Tok

• [Takuan]

  I thought I posted this a year ago;
  http://www.waltdisneysreturntooz.com/OOAK_Tiktok.jpg

• [Capissen]

  My father had a cache of Professor Jameson books that I read when still in elementary school. They’re great, I mean, really ahead of their time. But I could never get over the fact that their brains had to be enclosed in weak glass domes on top of their robot bodies. Always seemed like a “thermal exhaust port”-style flaw.

• [Gaudeamus]

  @#2: Thea Harbou wrote a story which then became the script, if I remember correctly. A lot of the story didn’t make it into the movie from what I have read so I think in this case they mean the book. It’s available as a PDA(!)

  @Takuan: I want a wind-up one of those for my desk.

  It’s nice to know in the golden age, robots did stuff besides plot the downfall of mankind.

• [Takuan]

  “Patent Double-Action, Extra-Responsive, Thought-Creating, Perfect-Talking Mechanical Man Fitted with out Special Clock-Work Attachment. Thinks, Speaks, Acts, and Does Everything but Live.”

• [Gaudeamus]

  !! Where can I get one of those?

• [Kabur Naj]

  Hey. It’s an image from the book “Ozma of Oz”, the third book in the Oz series, and which I just finished reading with my daughter recently.

  The Disney movie “Return to Oz” incorporates elements of this book plus the previous book “The Marvelous Land of Oz”, but is not nearly as good as either book, unfortunately.

• [catastrophegirl]

  anyone ever read tik-tok of oz? i always found it funny that L Frank Baum invented tik-tok with a wireless telephone. visionary, that man… the book version containing that tidbit was published in 1914

• [Mr_Orion]

  Looks strangely similar to a robot I once saw in a Wizard of Oz children’s book, only the oz version was gold.

  If I remember correctly, it actually did have a hat and mustache.

  Whoever backs this up with solid info and photos wins my special brand of sexual magic.