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"I identify with the weak person; this is one reason why my fictional protagonists are essentially antiheroes."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| Robot Baby | ||
| An infant robot. |
Sydney Biddle develops a serum that ensures that every man and woman will live for a thousand years in perfect health. But those who take the serum cannot have children. Women who wanted a substitute were offered robot babies.
| The novelty spread like wildfire. Women discarded their pets and their fantastic dolls and put in their application for a robot baby. Factories were opened, thousands of men put to work. That was an odd thing. Every invention making the robot babies possible, every minute of work done on them in the factories was masculine. Men almost fought for the right to work in those factories. Women were turned away in disdain. This work, said the men of the nation, was a purely masculine one.
Meantime, the series of lectures was being prepared. Only the greatest experts were employed. Experiences were exchanged, old books were read, elderly women were consulted, and at last two hundred lectures were written, covering every possible situation up to the age of six years. Then men and women were carefully tested for their ability to broadcast those lectures. At the end of a year everything was ready for the start of a six hour daily programme. By that time six million women had infant robots and more were being fabricated at the rate of a hundred thousand a week. And from the station the lectures went to the waiting women in America. The seven o'clock bedtime lecture was instantly popular. Women once again learned how to care for babies. But, cleverly built as they were, they were, at their best, simply well designed machines. They could be cared for, but they could not respond to that care; they could be loved, but they could not love. More than ever the women of America realized that their lives were empty and would remain empty till once again they were able to hold little children, real little children, pitiful, lovable, needful, helpless babies, in their arms. |
| Technovelgy from Life Everlasting,
by David H. Keller. Published by Amazing Stories in 1934 Additional resources -
|
Another description of a robot baby can be found in Brother Robot by Henry Slesar:
It is exhilarating to see my dream transformed into reality: a robot child that would be reared within the bosom of a human family, raised like a human child, a brother to a human child - growing, learning, becoming an adult. I can hardly contain my excitement at the possibilities I foresee.
As time goes on, little Mac, the robot baby, is developing beautifully:
Compare to the robotic infiltrator from Second Variety (1953) by Philip K. Dick,
the robot brother from Brother Robot (1958) by Henry Slesar,
the android son from Super-Toys Last All Summer Long (1969) by Brian Aldiss,
the Purza the Pukha from The Rowan (1990) by Anne McCaffrey, and
the artificial friend from Klara and the Sun (2021) by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Feb 6, 1997:
This is a day twice-blessed for me. Today, at St. Luke's hospital, our first child was born to my wife, Ila... when I saw her this morning, I could not bring myself to mention the second birth that has taken place in my laboratory. The birth of Machine, my robot child...
At four months, Fitz is developing along normal lines. His little body has gone from asymmetric postures to symmetric postures, his eyes now converge and fasten on any dangling object held at mid-point.
As for Mac, he is developing even more rapidly. He is beginning to learn control of his limbs: it is apparent that he will walk before his human brother. Before long, he will learn to speak; already I hear the rumbles within the cavity of the soundbox in his chest.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Life Everlasting
More Ideas
and Technology by David H. Keller
Tech news articles related to Life Everlasting
Tech news articles related to works by David H. Keller
Robot Baby-related
news articles:
- Awww! It's A Robot Baby Roundup!
- Robots Should Start Out As Babies
- MARLO Robot Attempts Wave Field
- Roboy 3DPrinted Humanoid Robot
- Will Robots Be Moral If We Raise Them Like Our Children?
- Animatronic Robotic Baby Exposed
| Tactile Skin Supplier Map |
| Robot Bees 3D Printed By Festo |
| DIY Robot Scorpion Crushes It |
| How To Settle An Argument Between Two Robots |
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'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
