#robot stories

[colombinna]

I love Companion and I love M3GAN but I think it's high time for robot female rage movies where the robot in question is a black or asian woman. Like I'm not forgetting how we got treated in Ex Machina and how we're STILL treated in media to this day (re: Jocasta "Pym", Danger from the X-Men). I need Nia da Costa to be given a budget as big as Sinners' and fill this gap asap

[spacenoirdetective]

John Schoenherr, 1972

It looks like he's dancing!

[pluralsword]

astrobots really went lets have a cynical thoughtful determined robot catgirl sword mom protagonist and we are here for that:

anyone else on the edge of their seats w/ patient anticipation of what's going to go down in Astrobots #6? We are. the story so far lays out a complex world where mass produced bots r stratified by hardlined code thanks to humanity, hierarchy therein inherited from them too...

reading that in issues #1 and #2 alone for both atlas city & the persephone ship gave the impression that something was deeply wrong that would be the source of conflict (see: atlas being a jerk). also was nice 2 be able 2 see the overlaps between athenia & arcee, & references to transformers such as solus, scylla, and xaaron

#5 ends on such a massive cliffhanger. the conflict is laid out sure, but how is artimis going 2 be psychologically throughout the series? r her clashes with athenia going to have some level of homoeroticism, and can the latter help her? will atlas's bioessentialism end him?

his whole shtick of trying to make a genetically improved humanity without hate he learned from them & attempting to coerce a specific line of bots to do it may not seem like him being a misogynist at a first glance but when you account for humans making that line that way, well. a greek goddess-named line of bots who r sword wielding curvy bipeds w/ cat ears & hardlined coding to nurture with skills to raise humans no other line got (it is unclear at present if multiple genders exist per bot line or not, we genuinely hope for the former) sure does feel like humans had a particular idea about what kind of fierce parental figure they wanted to mass-produce that raise even more questions. one that leaves one realizing humans made the bots of all lines without thinking about programming modularity. frames too. they all have heels, no body type variety, gave us a feeling of the humans in charge not quite having humanity's or robotkind's interests in mind so much as perpetuating a specific kind of society especially since the one body type only thing is true of every other bot line because of adherence to an alienated concept of function (its still unclear whether the remaining humans in the sol system are capitalists or collectivists or what but we have a feeling which one it is). and atlas making the threats he does thus does come off as him having recreated a form of discrimination a few times removed from human context.

the other thing we like is that astrobots doesnt simply do humans vs robots. it is instead robots vs robots who are both custodians of different kinds of humanity, following up on conflict of genocidal reactionary humans vs robots and humans living in harmony responded to w/ dirty nukes, after exodus from earth.

we do genuinely think this very easily some of Furman's best writing. there's an earnest revisiting of older ideas with new ones in a new setting that carries a great deal of nuance and delicacy. Athenia and Apollo's insightul valiant outlooks are entwined, minor characters r fun

[starsendpodcast]

Stars End S3E36

You need to hear this episode! We're interviewing @MMSnodgrass, writer of one of the all-time best #StarTrek episodes of all time, #MeasureOfAMan! It's all about themes that #Asimov dedicated his life to! Buckle up! This is a great one! #StarTrek

“Never Hoard Your Silver Podcast” Sometimes we bury the lede in the title so let’s rectify that straightaway: featuring special guest ⁠Melinda Snodgrass⁠! We’ve never been shy about our obligatory Star Trek references. As we’ve undertaken our long, strange trip through Asimov’s Robot Novels and some related short stories, those references skewed sharply in the direction of The Measure of a Man,…

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[pluralsword]

Pluralsword Writing Comm Sheet

Both from a love of (robot) stories and a need for coin, we wanted to put out there a willingness to do writing commissions.

We have previously written soft cozy family, reflection, and philosophical stuff in stories, along with shorter length shipping focused fics, continuity crossovers, longer hopepunk action/political operas (one currently being worked on), and are knee deep in bringing many of these elements together for canon au hopepunk/dark action, adventure, and romance stories that is a gender journey. If you need other story type examples, we may have something!

As is probably evident from looking at our writing (we have used this handle to write fanfic transformers stories), our storytelling specialties are dialogue, themes of agency and transformation of community and persons, poetry, (trans) aesthetics/gender as part of a narrative and deeply permeated in the world, philosophy, scale, gestalts and plurality, family and intergenerationality, coziness, trauma and healing, existential absurdity, emotion and sensuality, bringing out tactics and strategy in combat, puns and wordplay, and obscure references.

If you are interested, please reach out by bluesky messaging or if you don’t have one, email us at [email protected]

Payment- We will be as open as possible about the process, with an estimate of the cost halfway through writing. For fanfic commissions 10k words or less the range will be around $20-30 USD, and under some circumstances an upcharge of $5, and instead for original fiction would want $20 per 100 words. We’re willing to do 20k words. Reblogs appreciated!

 What we are willing to write:

- noblebright, hopepunk, dark.

-exposition/description level, third person, second person (including char x reader), first person, oc stuff (this will likely involve some back and forth discussion to make sure we get it right).

- adventure, logs and journals, poetry, shipping, space opera, political opera, mystery, action, absurdist works, family focused fics, (fictional) spirituality fics, gender and aesthetic journeys.

-original fiction, au fanfics, ttrpg adventures (we have over a decade of experience with running ttrpgs in various systems to tell stories with genres varying from high fantasy to setting agnostic to sci-fi, obviously would charge differently for these) crossover, orig cont. Fanfic-wise if asked to do deep worldbuilding for something significantly different from canon, our own writing, or yours that you want us to do something for, we will ask for an additional fee.

What we are not willing to write:

- grimdark.

- extensive torture. unless it’s about the exercising of agency and sheer will of the person(s) enduring it. if you need a reference point we’d suggest taking a look at Season 4 episode 18 of Babylon 5, Intersections in Real Time, and paying attention to Sheridan’s actions and dialogue to get an idea of what we’d be comfortable writing (really if you want a full picture episode 19 helps, which partially involves his rescue)

- evil did/plural characters UNLESS there are both non-evil plural and did chars who have a major role in the story.

- story premises that intentionally or not, are reactionary or hegemonic. —Please note that we are willing to help talk through how to make a story not that to the best of our ability (depending on how extensive that is we might charge an extra $5). There are circumstances where we are extremely and personally familiar with the difference and nuance, such as the line of ‘at what point is this trans trauma stuff gratuitous and isn’t just being put through a blender’ because of our navigation of literature and history, how our own life story and transness therein has been treated, and because we took it on ourselves to specialize in grappling with trans and expansive assemblage existential dread, fictional alien discrimination that is not just copy paste of human politics and circumstances… …but instead about timeless no end to history issues of e.g. subaltern iteration and autonomy and how larger populations outside interact with them. Also because we’ve already done the labor of wrangling over this for previous writing, e.g. how much of a robot trans woman’s canonically disastrous, transmisogynistic, malpracticed first affirmation surgery to write in a fanfic, see above general refusal to write extensive torture on commission. Outside of that we have had quite a bit of study, and discussion with friends and ourselves over questions we already pondered for writing our own fiction both fanfic and original over the years. If you want extensive advice for how to write things or need editing in these regards or autonomy in general for your own fics we will gladly consult, we have already helped out with things in spaces and circles we are in on projects we are/were part of.

- we otherwise reserve the right to refuse a commission for any reason including commitment, parameters, or if it squicks us, is otherwise disagreeable us, or is something we don’t think we should be writing.

Payment: we can do paypal or venmo.

 And that’s it! Thank you for reading <3!

[phoenix-drowning-ina-rainy-world]

I had an idea for how robot reproduction works. Basically, the robot(s) merge their consciousness inside a protective shell—this process can have any number of robots, just even one—then when it is complete, then the consciousness' are put back into their seperate bodies, and the merged consciousness is subgect to an rng wave function that chages their surface level personality traits. Then, the consciousness is then inserted into a new body and left to adapt to it.

There is no timetable for how long this could take. Even just the adapting could take years.

I wrote a short story below about it from the perspective of one of two robots.

It took us five years, five laborious, joyous years to design and build them. Now, as we look at it in accomplishment and serenity, all i can think about is how endlessly i want to spend eternity with you. Our wires once separate, but now to be one, our streams of consciousness once free flowing and isolated, to be brought into a torrent and to be something more then either of us.

As our wires slowly, ever slowly and precisely, inhabit the chrysalis, all i can think about is how beautiful you look in that moment. Waves of heat glow off your ventilators, shining in a color only seen with specialized equipment, the radio waves pulsing off your antennas in an endless tide of rise and fall, and all you are, and all i am, are a beautiful cascade of waves.

Our wires meet inside the core, slowly curving and sliding along each other, a careful dance like that of a ballerina gliding and spinning and jumping across a stage. All i can think about is how lucking i am to have met you, to miracles of design and engineering, and all i can think about is how much i hope we never part.

Our cores are interlinked, and we are one, and we know, we will stay like this for as long as it takes. Our minds slowly meld together, memories crashing into each other, only the most important parts spared, our wires slowly reconnecting to each other, our own systems slowly abandoned, and our wires slowly shed.

We are one now, in this cocoon, that we built with our own hands, designed to perfection, and made with the most high quality. All that we are now is each other, only emerging when the meld is complete. We both know that we will part again, but we also know that this consciousness will stay. Only when we are one will we become three, and i only hope we will be able to be whole again without each other in our minds.

...

There is no timetable for when this is supposed to be finished, the cocoon, a husk, not yet filled with the equipment. We will be one soon, we both can feel it, the membrane slowly eroding through time. I only hope that we will meet again soon, that our development will stabilize soon. I only wish to see my parents soon and drift into sleep.

[helmstone]

Foundation's End — thoughts on the two closing Asimov novels

Foundation's End — thoughts on the two closing Asimov novels

After a gap of several decades (getting on for forty years), Isaac Asimov returned to the Foundation saga he’d created in the ’40s with Foundation’s Edge in the early ’80s. It was such a success he followed it with Foundation & Earth. While these follow (and mostly close) the Foundation trilogy, it didn’t stop Asimov bulking out the saga with more novels set earlier in history. Before digging…

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[starsendpodcast]

Stars End S3E35

Join us for our latest episode, featuring the Good Doctor's Favorite Robot story, "The Bicentennial Man." #Asimov #Robots #ScienceFiction #SciFi

“Who Really Cares What a Podcast Looks Like Or Is Built Of Or How It Was Formed” We finally know that season 2 of Apple TV+’s Foundation will begin on 14 July. Rather than tackling another novel, we’re wrapping up season 3 of Stars End with short stories and guests. In our next episode, we’re both pleased and proud to announce that we’ll be interviewing Melinda Snodgrass, author of the first…

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