Robots in literature

Artificial humans and autonomous artificial servants have a long history in human culture, though the term Robot and its modern literary conception as a mobile machine equipped with an advanced artificial intelligence are more fairly recent. The literary role of artificial life has evolved over time: early myths present animated objects as instruments of divine will, later stories treat their attempted creation as a blasphemy with inevitable consequences, and modern tales range from apocalyptic warnings against blind technological progress to explorations of the ethical questions raised by the possibility of sentient machines.

Recently, a popular overview of the history of androids, robots, cyborgs and replicants from antiquity to the present has been published.^[1] Treated fields of knowledge are: history of technology, history of medicine, philosophy, literature, film and art history, the range of topics discussed is worldwide.