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"I don't know why I write science fiction. The voices in my head told me to!"
- Charles Stross
 |
| Mandroid | ||
| A humanoid robot; a robot in the shape of a person. |
There are hundreds of thousands of robots working in factories today. But they don’t look anything like a human being; their shape is dependent on their function.
| I turned to face the approaching mandroid. Its entire body was the same polished gunmetal, molded into the nuscle configuration of an archetypal human male.The head was carved into furows to represent thick back-combed hair... The green photoreceptor gaze regarded me gravely. The mandroid became quite still... On Harlan's World, you don't see many mandroids. They're expensive to build, compared to a synthetic or even a clone, and most jobs that require a human form are better done by those organic alternatives. |
| From Altered Carbon,
by Richard Morgan. Published by Del Rey in 2003 Additional resources -
|
Morgan has some interesting things to say about the use of humanoid robots; his perspective is that machines are expensive, but human labor is cheap, because there are so many of them and they reproduce cheaply.
This word seems to derive from a cheesy science fiction movie of the early 1990’s. It is also the name of a “breakdancer / producer / plasterer from Barnsley in South Yorkshire.”
The term has also surfaced in The X-Files. In the episode "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'", when Blaine Faulkner is describing his encounter with Mulder, he describes him this way: "And the other one, the tall lanky one, his face was so blank and expressionless. He didn't seem human. I think he was a mandroid. The only time he reacted was when he saw the dead alien."
(Thanks to Justin for writing in.)
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'A worker replaced by a nubot... had to be compensated.'
'... forcing the energy transfer which allowed him to regrow his lost fingers.'
'The car surged and lifted, clearing its top by a negligible margin.'
Science fiction authors are serious about sleep, too.
'I had explained," said Nessus, "that our civilisation was dying in its own waste heat.'
'Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? - any work a human being does around a house.'
SF writers have thought about this since the 19th century.
