A recent post discussed an early tale of robots running amok, Edmond
Hamilton’s, 1926 novelette The Metal
Giants, originally published in Weird
Tales. The word robot was still
fairly new at that time, having been coined just a few years before by Karel
Čapek in his 1921 science fiction play, R.U.R.
(Rossum’s Universal Robots). However,
creatures—that is creations—resembling
what we now call robots and androids began appearing as early as 600 BCE in
folklore and mythology. Conceivably the
basic template for future robotics may have originated in something like the
Biblical story of the creation of Eve:
But
for Adam no suitable helper was found.
So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he
was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with
flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman
from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. (Genesis 2:20-22)
Thus
robots can be seen as a small subset of a more general category, an archetype
really: the effort to bring life to an artificial image through magic and weird
science. Recall that Adam was also made
from inanimate material, common dust, created because “there was no man to work
the ground,” and presumably formed in an image resembling that of his creator. Since then, humans, like robots, many
behaving like crazed automatons, have been “out of control”. Mary Shelley’s monster, assembled in a 19th
century laboratory from dead flesh, (“the dissecting room and the
slaughterhouse furnished many of my materials”), and revived by an application
of electricity shambles through a cautionary tale that has influenced robot
stories ever since. When humans engage in such manufacture the
process involves unavoidable hubris and idolatry—a bad mix, one that almost
always produces misery and terror.
Robots
and androids become more prevalent in weird fiction of the late 1800s and early
1900s, probably spurred on by the growth of industrialized society. Their components become less flesh-like and
more electro-mechanical at the beginning of the 20th century, taking
on the iconic robot form that we recognize today. But the idea is ancient, pre-industrial and
enduring. Our fascination with robots
continues today—our best shot so far at emulating the divine in its ability to
fashion things that move about on their own.
One of
the first short stories in English to describe what would later be called a
robot is the classic short story by Ambrose Bierce, Moxon’s Master (1893).
Bierce opens the story with a spirited argument between the narrator and
his friend Moxon. At issue is the nature
of consciousness. Moxon wants to expand
the definition to include plant life, crystals, and especially machines—“…you
may be able to infer their convictions from their acts,” Moxon says.
The
narrator, increasingly aggravated by his friend’s outrageous notions, wonders
about Moxon’s health and sanity. They
are arguing just outside Moxon’s machine shop, which no one is allowed to
enter. Moxon occasionally glances
nervously at the door of this room. Both
narrator and reader are by now wondering what is in that machine shop. Here is Moxon’s underlying theory about the
origins of life and consciousness, as applied to mechanical entities. Moxon believes that
“…all
matter is sentient, that every atom is a living, feeling, conscious being…There
is no such thing as dead, inert matter: it is all alive; all instinct with
force, actual and potential; all sensitive to the same forces in its
environment and susceptible to the contagion of higher and subtler ones
residing in such superior organisms as may be brought into relation with, as
those of man when he is fashioning it into an instrument of his will. It absorbs something of his intelligence and
purpose—more of them in proportion to the complexity of the resulting machine
and that of its work.”
This is
a marvelous and troubling insight, and one that is relatively easy to
demonstrate. Many readers have no doubt
experienced days when inanimate objects appeared to conspire against them:
computers and other appliances that suddenly and for no apparent reason refuse
to obey, a car that will not turn over, common objects that jump from one’s
grasp or suddenly fall from the shelf, or lose themselves in a drawer somewhere
the moment they are needed most. It is
the seemingly inanimate matter of everyday life organizing itself to thwart and
humiliate us, to go its own way, to make us look foolish and powerless.
Moxon
offers a final insight about the nature of thought: “Consciousness is the creature of Rhythm.” Perhaps all things that move are conscious,
because movement is rhythmic. The narrator
mulls this idea over in his mind as he departs Moxon’s house in exasperation. He soon returns, curious and intrigued by the
notion. What was built in that secret machine
shop?
This
being a story by Ambrose Bierce, known for his misanthropy and cynicism,
readers can expect at least one horrific murder unredeemed by moralizing or
sentimentality or concern for conventional justice. Bierce is best known for his often
anthologized horror classic The Damned
Thing (1893) and the tone of Moxon’s
Master is similar.
Moxon’s
robot is still quite humanoid in form.
He—it?—is gorilla shaped, has hair, wears a hat and tunic, but gives
away his true nature by the sound he makes:
“a low humming or buzzing…unmistakably a whirring of wheels.” The
automaton’s behavior and motivation, even a shrug of its shoulders at one point,
are all too human, though exaggerated by his mechanical strength. It will come as no surprise that Bierce’s
jaded view of humanity is mirrored in the later actions of Moxon’s mechanical
creation.
Moxon’s Master can be found in Can Such Things Be? (re-printed in 1990),
a collection of Bierce’s stories that contains other representative works like The Damned Thing, The Death of Halpin Frayser, and The Middle Toe of the Right Foot, among others. Also present in that volume is Bierce’s An Inhabitant of Carcosa (1887), a brief
piece thought to be an inspiration for Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow (1895).
Bierce’s realistic style and cynical tone anticipates that of much
contemporary horror literature.
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