Authors Electric

scene from 'I, Robot'  © 2004 Twentieth Century Fox. One of humanity's greatest fears is that intelligent machines will take over the world and enslave us as human beings. Science fiction has already been there, done that and got the robo-t-shirt. In the Terminator films, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a cyborg assassin sent back through time to kill the one human who might be able to stop the machines. Whereas in  I, Robot,  based on a collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov, every robot is programmed with three basic laws designed to keep it subservient to humans: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or (through inaction) allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.   We might not (yet) have rampaging Terminator-style machines tearing up ...

Are you sure it's only a figment of the imagination? A gorgeous botanical drawing of a Triffid by Bryan Poole for the Science Fiction Classics (1998) Dr Seuss allegedly invented the word ‘nerd’. Lewis Carroll gave us Jabberwocks, slithy toves and vorpal blades.  And no dinner service is complete without a runcible spoon, courtesy of Edward Lear. Everyone has heard of robots - a word popularized by Karel Capek in 1920, although he credited his brother Josef with actually inventing it. Following the discovery of a newly discovered particle called a positron, Isaac Asimov provided his robots with ‘positronic’ brains to help give the stories a more scientific feel, even though he admitted himself that it was a bit of spoofery. It was catchy, sounded right, and stuck, and has been used ever since by other writers - not to mention being incorporated into the names of any number of companies: even non-nerds will have come across the word. Personally, my fa...

A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and a damn good book to read ... Early yesterday morning TH White dropped in to share his overwhelming grief at the loss of his beloved dog Brownie: after pouring out his sorrow he lingered a little longer to help with a bit of research on dogs for a book I'm currently working on. With a bit of work done, I felt justified in taking a little time off to enjoy a picnic lunch with Ray Bradbury, who was joined halfway through by Isaac Asimov; regretfully I had to send them away far sooner than I would have wished in order to get back to work. In the evening my dinner guest was John Wyndham, who cared not at all that the grub was on a tray rather than the dining room table (which is too covered with reference materials at the moment for formal dining). He kept me up rather later than intended, but when I finally got to bed, I shared a mug of cocoa with Terry Pratchett before drifting off to sleep. Yes, you're never alone when you've got a ...