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"We were essentially being shell-shocked by rapid change. That was one of the things you needed science-fiction writers for back in the Sixties, because we could cope with the future."
- Peter Watts
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| Android | ||
| A synthetic being having the form of a human being. |
This is probably the first use of the word 'android' in the era of science fiction.
| "The traffic that brought him such enormous wealth was the production and sale of androids...
Eldo Arrynu," amplified Jay Kalam, "had come upon the secret of synthetic life. He generated artificial cells, and propagated them in nutrient media, controlling development by radiological and biochemical means." |
| Technovelgy from The Cometeers,
by Jack Williamson. Published by Street and Smith in 1936 Additional resources -
|
Consider other uses of the word "android", for example the description of the Nexus-6 Brain in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968):
Or Robert Silverberg in Tower of Glass (1970):
See also androide from Cyclopaedia: or, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1727) by Ephraim Chambers,
andy from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968) by Philip K. Dick and droid from Star Wars (1976) by George Lucas.
The Nexus-6 android types, Rick reflected, surpassed several classes of human specials in terms of intelligence. In other words, androids equipped with the new Nexus-6 brain unit had from a sort of rough pragmatic standpoint evolved beyond a major - but inferior - segment of mankind...
He was in total communion with the computer, making use of all its sensors, scanners and terminals. Why go through the tedious routine of talking to a computer, when it was possible to design an android capable of becoming part of one?
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
