The ’savage’ robot in 1937
Paleo-future has posted a Lil’ Abner comic that ran in the July 18, 1937 edition of the Charleston Gazette, featuring a robot that suddenly turns violent. Visit their blog for the complete strip. I’ve featured one part of the comic that stands out the most, where the professor refers to his robot as perfect, yet capable of being a “savage” and “murderous.” This early development of the robot archetype seems to parallel attitudes toward Native Americans in early American history. I would be interested to see if this is merely a coincidence, or if there is a pattern.
The comic also reminds me of the short but comical book by Daniel H. Wilson entitled “How to survive a robot uprising.” In his book, Wilson plays upon fears within popular culture that technology, specifically robots, will one day destroy humanity. Focusing on recent appearences of robots in popular culture, like the movie I, Robot he shows this as a contemporary problem, however I wonder if there is a larger historical framework that could be developed. Wilson sits on the jury at the Robot Hall of Fame, and just released a new book entitled “Where’s My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future that Never Arrived.”
Here is a very lengthy video where Wilson discusses his first book, and digs deeper into robot fears within popular culture.
I'm a digital humanist and graduate of American Studies, currently working as a web developer and
Robot Power at Finding America May 16th, 2007 at 1:20 am
[...] past several weeks Paleo-Future has shared great posts about robots, which I’ve looked at in The ‘savage’ robot in 1937 and Decoding Al Capp’s Robot, Continued. The brief timeline of pre-Asimov robot history I created [...]