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Re: a few things

On Mon, 20 May 2002, ryan richards wrote:

> > > That isn't to say, however, that the ideas weren't profound and
> > > mostly probably prophetic.  Has anyone ever posited the idea of a
> > > robot boy desiring to become human?  Probably, but I can't think of
> > > who offhand.
> >
> > You mean, apart from scifi and fantasy writers?
>
> I'm sure there were sci fi guys who wrote of such creatures but I'm just
> not fimiliar with any because I'm not really a buff.  Do you know of any
> series with such a character?

I'm not all that familiar with scifi literature, but I have a fairly good
grasp of film and TV, and the most obvious example that comes to mind of a
robot wanting to be a real person is _Star Trek: The Next Generation_'s
Data, who was prefigured by another Gene Roddenberry creation, Questor, in
a 1970s TV pilot called _The Questor Tapes_.  (Trivia note:  The title
character is played by Robert Foxworth, and his creator/predecessor is
played by Lew Ayres ... and Foxworth later went on to play Ayres'
successor in _Damien: Omen II_.)  By "real person", what I mean is an
"emotional person", since both characters are definitely "real" in one
sense, and have personalities of their own -- they just lack the emotion
chip, or emotion circuits, or whatever, that would make them more human.

Then there is Isaac Asimov's "Bicentennial Man", which was a short story
before Asimov and Robert Silverberg expanded it into the novel _The
Positronic Man_, which was in turn adapted into a movie starring Robin
Williams and directed by Chris Columbus (who also directed _Home Alone_
and the Harry Potter movie).  I haven't read these particular stories of
Asimov's, but I gather the movie captures the gist of them -- a robot
wishes to become human, and gradually finds a way to fulfill his wish.

I'm not sure about *boy* robots, specifically, though.  FWIW, there's an
extra aspect to boy robots wishing to be human that makes their stories
inherently sadder than those of adult-shaped robots, and that is the fact
that the boy robots almost certainly won't be able to grow.  They will
forever be stuck inside their childlike bodies -- and in the case of David
in _A.I._, he has apparently been programmed to remain childlike on an
emotional and developmental level, too.  You have to wonder why anybody
would want to "adopt" a child that would be stuck at that level of
dependence and immaturity, and would never be able to grow old with you.

--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
 "I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where."
      Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom

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