Generation Robot
A Century of Science Fiction, Fact, and Speculation
-
- £11.99
Publisher Description
Generation Robot covers a century of science fiction, fact and, speculation—from the 1950 publication of Isaac Asimov’s seminal robot masterpiece, I, Robot, to the 2050 Singularity when artificial and human intelligence are predicted to merge. Beginning with a childhood informed by pop-culture robots in movies, in comic books, and on TV in the 1960s to adulthood where the possibilities of self-driving cars and virtual reality are daily conversation, Terri Favro offers a unique perspective on how our relationship with robotics and futuristic technologies has shifted over time. Peppered with pop-culture fun-facts about Superman’s kryptonite, the human-machine relationships in the cult TV show Firefly, and the sexual and moral implications of the film Ex Machina, Generation Robot explores how the techno-triumphs and resulting anxieties of reality bleed into the fantasies of our collective culture.
Clever and accessible, Generation Robot isn’t just for the serious, scientific reader—it’s for everyone interested in robotics and technology since their science-fiction origins. By looking back at the future she once imagined, analyzing the plugged-in present, and speculating on what is on the horizon, Terri Favro allows readers the chance to consider what was, what is, and what could be. This is a captivating book that looks at the pop-culture of our society to explain how the world works—now and tomorrow.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist Favro (Sputnik's Children) serves up a frothy brew of fact and fiction in this appraisal of how the robots of science fiction are becoming part of day-to-day life. The book begins with a brief history of robotic simulacra in early science fiction that is marred by a number of factual inaccuracies: for example, Frankenstein was first published in 1818, not 1811, and John W. Campbell, not Joseph Campbell, edited the pulp magazine Astounding (not Amazing). Favro then takes the reader on a jaunty tour through a century of speculative robotics that includes breezy and accessible chapters on advances in autonomous vehicles, the prospect of self-sustaining smart houses, and the possibility of robots as helpmates and even intimates. Each chapter begins with an extrapolative scenario in which Favro writes herself into a scene in the near future; for example, in the chapter on autonomous vehicles, Favro conceives of hitching a ride in a driverless car from Toronto to Tenafly, N.J., in 2025. She then spends the rest of the chapter discussing the details of the scene in the context of research on the emerging technology. In every chapter, Favro shows how different actual robots are from many of their counterparts in science fiction. Her book's greatest achievement may be to get readers looking at their cell phones, computers, prosthetics, and other gadgets as robots in the real world.
