Texas Robot SciFi books and authors
Texas Independence Day is a great excuse to explore (or revisit) Texas robot scifi. Read for the great stories, learn about mental models, machine learning, emotions, computer architectures, domestic robotics, dexterous manipulation,and bounded rationality. And who said robotics has to be a slog? Most of the books are comedies!
Martha Wells and her delightful Murderbot series, which I finally was able to work into a Science Robotics article on mental models! It perfectly captures research in cognition and reasoning as Murderbot wearily slogs through his day job as a security robot, just trying to get back and watch streaming media. See the RTSF interview with her here.
Nicky Drayden and her wonderfully madcap Prey of Gods set in Johannesburg. Will robots have emotions, if only for self-regulation? Probably. If they do will they hold grudges? Definitely. See the RTSF interview with her here.
A. Lee Martinez did a very funny one-off on detective noir with The Automatic Detective. It has a Rules of Supervilliany sensibility and the bulk of Hard Luck Hank - which turns out to illustrate the challenges of dexterous manipulation. And check out the RTSF interview with Lee Martinez- he’s funny guy!
C. Robert Cargill with Sea of Rust, and its prequel Day Zero, are exceptions to the rule, being action-packed thrillers along the lines of Mad Max. Sea of Rust also made it into Science Robotics as an example of what remorse and regret means emotionally versus what it means in machine learning. It also has insights into computer architectures for robots. Day Zero looks at domestic service robots and health care.
Beyond Texas authors, there are some great books that involve Texans and Texas:
There's the one about this nice Jewish boy from Houston (Brent Spiner's description of himself, not mine) playing the role of Lt Cmdr Data on this new series, Star Trek: The Next Generation-- Brent Spiner's only lightly fictionalized account of his third year on the set, Fan Fiction, is pretty fun too.
Texas does figure prominently in Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson; it's not a robot scifi book per se but there are lots of drones flitting about.
The Strange is set on a counterfactual Mars in the city of, wait for it, New Galveston. Space exploration was financed by Texans during the Civil War. Robots, called Machines, are an important part of life and an important part of the plot. It is a great illustration of bounded rationality as I note in Science Robotics.
Each of the links has where you can buy the books. And don't forget to buy my books too- either the textbooks or the Robotics Through Science Fiction series!
