If we were to choose the “oldest theme” in science fiction novels, it would probably be robots. Such stories date back to the days of hoes and swords. It can be said that creating a machine that is as spiritual as humans is almost one of the oldest dreams of mankind.
In "Liezi·Tangwen", a classic of various schools of thought during the Warring States Period, there is a short story called "Yanshi", which today has been recognized as the first science fiction novel in Chinese history: 1 The famous alchemist presented a puppet to the king. This puppet can not only dance, but also sing, and is fully "equipped". In the end, it actually winked at the princess, which finally angered the king and cut it into pieces. Although "Yanshi" is included in a collection introducing folk alchemy, it itself is a complete technological fantasy novel. It is probably the earliest robot-themed science fiction novel in the world.
Almost at the same time, the image of Daedalus, a skilled craftsman, appeared in ancient Greek mythology. Among his many inventions was Talos, a bronze servant with the head of an ox and the body of a human body. This bronze man's duty was to guard the treasure of King Milos on the island of Crete, but he was eventually destroyed by the heroes of the "Igor" who were looking for the golden sheepskin. Tyros should probably be considered a robot.
In Jewish folklore, there is a dummy "Corin" made of clay. As long as a piece of paper with God's name written on it is put into the mouth of a "Corin", it will act like a real person and serve its owner without complaint.
In a document called "Yuefu Zalu" in the Tang Dynasty, there is also a work that combines robots and sexual implications like "Yanshi": Maodun Shanyu led the Xiongnu soldiers to attack the Western Han Dynasty . Unable to resist, Liu Bang adopted counselor Chen Ping's plan to let a robot beauty sing and dance on the tower. As a result, Maodun Shanyu's wife, Yan Shi, was jealous and was afraid that her husband would take this beauty as his concubine after entering the city, so she forced him to withdraw his troops. In the Tang Dynasty document "Da Ye Shi Yi Ji", the author actually fictionalized the scene of the Sui Dynasty royal singing and dancing event, in which 200 robots performed in a grand meeting, which was very spectacular.
Of course, it was the modern Western science fiction writers who ultimately promoted the theme of robots. In 1816, the German writer Hoffmann wrote the short science fiction novel "The Sandman". In the novel, glasses manufacturer Dr. Coppelius creates a female robot. She is beautiful and mysterious, and the hero Nathanael is deeply obsessed with her. Because the female robot is described as coming and going without a trace, the story is full of fantasy and metaphor. This novel was selected by Freud, the master of psychoanalysis, and became world-famous as a case proving the existence of the subconscious mind.
In 1886, the French writer Lil Adam named the human-looking machine "Android" in his novel "The Eve of the Future". It consists of 4 parts: < /p>
1. Life system (balance, walking, vocalization, body swing, feeling, expression, regulating movement, etc.);
2. Modeling solution (a metal covering that allows joints to move freely, a kind of armor);
3. Artificial muscles (the above-mentioned armor has muscles, veins, gender characteristics and other basic shapes of the human body);
4. Artificial skin (including skin color, structure, contours, hair, vision, teeth, claws, etc.).
In 1920, Czech writer Karel Capek published the science fiction script "Rosam's Universal Robot". In the script, Capek wrote the Czech word "Robota" as "Robot", and "Robota" means slave. The play foretells the tragic impact of the development of robots on human society, which has attracted widespread attention and is regarded as the origin of the word robot. In the play, robots work silently according to their master's orders; without feelings and emotions, they perform heavy labor in a dull manner. Later, Rossam's company succeeded in making robots have emotions, which led to a rapid increase in the application sectors of robots. Robots have become indispensable in factories and household chores. The robots found that humans were very selfish and unfair, and finally rebelled. The robots had excellent physical and intellectual abilities, so they destroyed humans.
But the robots didn't know how to make themselves and thought they would soon become extinct, so they started looking for human survivors, but to no avail. In the end, a pair of male and female robots with better perception than other robots fell in love. At this time, robots evolved into humans, and the world came back to life.
What Capek raised was the issue of robot safety, perception and self-reproduction. The advancement of science and technology is likely to cause problems that humans do not want. Although the science fiction world is just an imagination, human society will likely face this reality.
In 1872, Samuel Butler, a writer who immigrated to New Zealand from the United Kingdom, published the science fiction novel "Fantasy Country". This country strictly prohibits the use of any machines because its rulers fear that machines will advance day by day and eventually replace humans. This is the earliest nightmare of "machine life" replacing humans that appeared in science fiction. In the early days of the industrial age, however, this fear was widespread among workers who would lose their jobs to machines. By 1909, in Ambrose Bierce's science fiction novel "The Master of Moissanite", an "automatic machine" that killed the master clearly appeared.
Before the 1938 science fiction short story "Karen O'Lo" appeared, robots had always been the image of rebels in science fiction novels. In this novel written by Delly, two young scientists co-created a female robot as beautiful as a fairy and gave it emotional capabilities. She fell in love with one of the scientists, and after going through some twists and turns, they finally got married. Many years later, the scientist died, and the robot wife who could have lived forever also died in love. This theme may seem nothing new now, but it was groundbreaking in that era of fear of machine civilization.
After World War II, the great science fiction writer Asimov summed up the experience of describing robots in previous science fiction novels and raised them to a systematic and rational level. He created the famous three laws of robotic engineering:
1. Robots must not harm people, or do nothing to allow people to be harmed. 2. Robots should obey all orders from people, but orders The exception is when it conflicts with the First Law.
3. Robots must protect their own safety, but must not conflict with the first and second laws.
Around these three laws, Asimov constructed a series of ingenious robot stories. Some of these short robot stories are collected in "I, Robot" (1950) and "The Rest of the Robots" (1964). The later version can be found in "The Bicentennial Man & Other Stories" (1976). In addition, Asimov also created a number of novels with robots as the theme: "The Caves of Steel" in 1953, "The Naked Sun" in 1956, and so on.
In addition, the robots described by Asimov are "doll-shaped robots". This type of robot only looks roughly like a human being, and can be roughly divided into a torso, head and limbs, or even not so clearly. No matter how far their spiritual world has developed, it is obvious from their appearance that they are obviously different from humans. They are a complex of metal devices. When robot fantasy developed from ancient times to modern times, there was a spiral from "humanoid robots" to "doll sex robots" and then back to "humanoid robots". In the heyday of Asimov's creation, there were many robots in science fiction. It's this silly tin tube.
There is basically no bloody and gloomy atmosphere constructed by predecessors in Asimov's robot stories. He paints a picture of our robot friend that is humorous, intelligent, and even somewhat down-to-earth. For example, a robot that requires programmers to say "thank you" before it starts working (Key Item, 1946); a robot that arranges a clever plan to run for president (Evidence, 1946); a robot that attempts suicide because it is tired of its suppression mission (All the Troubles in the World, 1959); in order to pursue The definition of human beings eventually had to include themselves as robots (...That ThouArtMindfulofHim, 1974).
The most magnificent of these is "The Last Question" (1959), a computer that accompanies the universe itself to its end, and finally appears as a god, rebuilding the universe in nothingness. The computer itself was built from previous generations of computers. It can be said that it already possesses the essential characteristic of all life: the ability to evolve itself.
Asimov's science fiction novels about robots have had a great impact not only among science fiction fans, but also among professional scientists. Minsky, a famous American artificial intelligence expert who works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, once invited Asimov to visit his research, but Asimov refused because he was worried that his imagination "would be affected by these annoying things." suppressed by reality."
Machines are soulless, and whether robots have souls is precisely the key to the robot theme. The subject matter of robots going crazy and causing trouble is a sideline in science fiction works. The robots in such stories are somewhere between "soul" and "soulless". Theoretically, the robot goes crazy because there is a program error, which is a mechanical failure. But their behavior after going crazy often has human characteristics. In works, crazy robots usually play the villain.
This is how the movie "The Iron Man" was handled. The robot there was originally a video game toy that could play war games with half-grown children. But its programming was modified by its designers from a military robot program, and contained the original command to "do whatever it takes to kill the opponent." Initially, it fought children with harmless plastic balls. Slowly replaced by steel balls, table knives, saws and electric current! And with the improvement of learning ability, the actions of Iron Man agents become more and more covert.
Among these crazy stories, British science fiction writer Aldiss published "Who Can Replace Man?" in 1958. "Quite humorous. The characters throughout the story are intelligent machines: field cultivators, seed dispensing machines, document writing machines, lock picking machines... They heard that humans destroyed themselves in the war, and they wanted to enter the city to replace humans. It is not until the end of the story that a pitiful living person appears. And when the hungry refugee gave the order, the already menacing robots immediately followed it.
In Asimov's work "The 200-Year-Old Man", the robot servant Andrew served the Martin family for four generations, and finally gave up the machine body, changed into human form, and died with his beloved. . In addition to being touching in itself, this story embodies the changing trend of the artificial human theme: from puppet-shaped robots to the original humanoid robots. The so-called humanoid robot is a robot that looks exactly like a human so that onlookers cannot tell the difference.
China in the 1970s was an era that had just emerged from monotony. At that time, thousands of people flocked to the cinema to watch an American movie called "The World to Come." That was the first time Chinese people saw a science fiction movie. Wow, a robot that looks exactly like a real person! Chase, contest... Of course, the real people finally defeated their machine doubles, but the audience's hands were already sweating.
In an era when there were not many forms of entertainment, the film was shown many times, and radio stations (television was not yet popular) also played its audio clips constantly. Although it was only a second-rate American science fiction film, in that special era, it had a Chinese audience that no subsequent science fiction film had. The concept of "robots threatening humanity" also followed this movie to China, although it was decades later than the West.
"Future World" is actually the sequel to a science fiction movie called "Westworld", but the main episode was not introduced to China until the late 1980s. Since entertainment methods have been greatly enriched, not many people have paid attention to it. "Westworld" describes a Disney-like park. All life there, including poisonous snakes and beasts, are machines. Eventually, the robot cowboy actors lose control and begin slaughtering tourists.
"Future World" brought the subject of robots to Chinese science fiction writers. A large number of Chinese science fiction works describing robots followed. Like this movie, they mostly feature humanoid robots. However, in most of these science fiction novels, robots are just embellishments, either workers or domestic servants, and there are relatively few works with characteristics and depth. Among them, "Dream in the Land of Tenderness" (written by Wei Yahua) is more outstanding and even won the China Best Short Story Award.
In the novel, the protagonist who is quite chauvinistic hopes to get a truly obedient wife, but when he cannot get it in reality, he buys a robot wife. This sweet wife was so completely dependent on her husband that he burned his research results after getting drunk, and the robot wife helped him light the fire.
Since humanoid robots are so similar to humans, they are perfect as stand-ins. Taiwanese science fiction pioneer Huang Hai once wrote a science fiction novel called "Time Company".
It is about a company that has developed a business that provides stand-ins for busy people, which is equivalent to selling time. What a coincidence. More than 20 years later, mainland science fiction author Feng Zhigang also published a science fiction novel "The Stand" with a similar theme.
How complex a machine is to be considered a human being is perhaps the biggest question and the most important suspense in the subject of artificial humans. In the science fiction movie "Thunderbolt 5", the sign that a robot becomes a human is that it understands humorous stories. In "Song of Life", the secret for robots to get rid of their mechanical nature and become human is a piece of music composed of DNA.
"Song of Life" was created by Wang Jinkang and is a classic work by a Chinese science fiction writer on the subject of humanoid robots. The robot "Yuan Yuan" in the story is a robot that always looks like a child, but his wisdom becomes more and more mature as he grows older. Finally, he found the magic weapon that could bring him to the boundary of life - music composed of genetic codes. Yuanyuan wants to lose this "Song of Life" to his robot companions in every corner of the world, and whether that means the end of mankind, the author gave a completely unexpected answer.
When we say that someone is like a machine, we usually have a derogatory meaning, meaning that he does not know how to adapt to things and only knows how to obey orders. Robots usually try their best to show this "machineness" in stories. In "Terminator", the robot's shell was burned off and its body was blown off, but it still had to perform assassination missions. Till death.
Contrary to the all-powerful and invincible robots like the "Terminator", there are also quite weak humanoid robots in science fiction works. In Alien, humanoid robots have little power. They are as fragile as humans. In combat, he can't stand up to a strong man, let alone a fierce "alien". When they conduct scientific research, they need instruments and equipment just like people, rather than having instruments installed in their bodies. They only get to perform once in the movie. At the beginning of the second episode, the humanoid robot master spread his hands flat on the table and quickly pricked the gaps between his fingers with a sharp knife to show his accuracy. But even this time, the performance went wrong: the robot punctured the skin, bleeding white artificial blood, and the hostess thought her identity was revealed.
Phili Purdyk's humanoid robot in "The Blade Runner" falls somewhere in between. Individual human beings are no match for them when fighting alone. But their power is also very limited, and their lifespan is only four years. The story puts the robot in a sympathetic position. The best of them break through human defenses and return to Earth, trying to extend their lives and eventually gain human emotions. But humans sent agents code-named "Blade Runners" to eliminate these flesh-and-blood bodies one by one without mercy.
At the end of the film, although the robot leader was able to subdue the "Blade Runner", he did not take his life. Instead, after pouring out his inner pain, he died in the cold wind and rain. In this work, robots respect life more than humans.