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"I received a nice letter the other day from the Dalai Lama. He had read 'The Nine Billion Names of God'. It is about a computer at a Tibetan monastery."
- Arthur C. Clarke
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| Robotrix | ||
| A robot, female in appearance. |
As far as I know, the earliest use in a science fiction story (see below for caveat).
| Glare lit up the shape of a middle-aged black man in a topcoat, neat, colorful tie, his face aristocratic, each feature starkly outlined. The black man paced about across the oil streaked cement, his arms folded, an absent expression on his face. Evidently he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship. "Call me," the black man said. Slowly and firmly, but also a little loudly, he said. "These places, these coin-operated robot gas stations, are downers late at night. |
| Technovelgy from Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Doubleday in 1974 Additional resources -
|
The word appeared in Science Fiction Digest in 1933, in a review by F.J. Ackerman of the film Metropolis:
The term fembot is also used; this term first appeared in 1976 in The Bionic Woman, an American television series.
Compare to the manufactured wife from A Wife Manufactured to Order (1895) by Alice W. Fuller, the
psychophonic nurse from The Psychophonic Nurse (1928) by David H. Keller, the
teleoperated robot surrogate from The Robot and the Lady (1938) by Manly Wade Wellman, the
mechanical bride from The Mechanical Bride (1954) by Fritz Leiber, the
maid-robot from The Midas Plague (1954) by Frederik Pohl and the
Nanny from Nanny (1955) by Philip K. Dick.
Writers use gynoid to describe a feminine gendered robot; see the entry for gynoid from Divine Endurance (1984) by Gwyneth Jones.
Rotwang, inventor and aristocrat, learned of the meetings and planned to subdue them. For this, he created a robotrix, a mechanical woman, and, by kidnapping Mary, and with the use of amazing machinery, made of the steel girl a perfect double for the maid of the lower levels. This automan was to teach servility to them but instead it taught hate and revolt.
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'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...'
'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
I'm hoping that this procedure becomes a normal part of medical practice!
'... nothing was perfected until M. Pantalon announced the completion of his automatic valet.'
'...its streets were of remarkable width, with few or no buildings so high as mosques, churches, State-offices, or palaces in Tellurian cities.'
