h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In the discussion of a piece (Frankenstein, Big Brother and Lolita: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A591626) which is heading for peer review, the subject of mechanical men came up. Is there enough in the subject to produce a guide article?

There's Frankenstein, robots, Pinnochio, golems. But what about gods which form humans from clay or human ribs?

I want to look at the history of manufactured men, and whether there is a history of manufactured women. I want to link creatures to their historical contexts - oppression, alienation, religious doubt, science fiction...

Any ideas?

Um...just a few characters that sprung to mind. Ted Hughes' The Iron Man /Iron Giant and several characters from The Wizard of Oz spring to mind (tinman, scarecrow..),Worzel Gummidge if scarecrows count.

Johnny 5 from the film Short Circuit and the 80s tv show Metal Mickey featured memorable robots with interesting personalities. I don't need to mention Marvin, Kryten, Robbie etc

Women- Pygmalion made an ivory statue of his ideal woman who he fell in love with and it was brought to life by Aphrodite (I think)....
Fritz Lang's film Metropolis has a female robotic Frankenstein...

It's a big subject!

And from a historical point of view there are an enormous supply of tales about manufactured men.

Damn near every nation has a Creation myth, and so damn near each nation has a separate story of created mortals.

Off the top of my head I can think of the Hebrew God Yahweh creating men in his image; the winged serpent Quetzalcoatl creating mortals from the bones of his Father mixed with his own blood and ground into a mouldable paste; Zeus and his five generations of man, starting with Gold and ending with Bronze; the Mayan story in the Popol Vuh of the Gods creating men from mud (which crumbled), then from wood (which was unable to speak), and then from maize (which, oddly enough, worked fine); or there's the Australian aboriginal story of the Djanggawul family who decided they'd create humanity through the tried and tested method of incest.

And that's just a select few of an insanely large number of implausibly odd stories.

The net has been cast wide, but a lot of the creation stories are similar (I wonder why...). Some of the human manufacturings are due to people "playing god" or "replacing god with science". I want to gather lots of data and see how patterns emerge.

Looks like we have two entries already: creation myths and man-made men.

***B

(if anyone makes a mechanical man, can I have the prototype to test, please? )

Most man making man stories are of the "playing god is bad/science is bad" school, with the tales changing as the science of the act changes. So, your Frankenstein fits here, along with Metropolis, the Cybernaughts (from the Avengers, weehee), Bladerunner etc.
There is a (as far as I know) relatively recent new strain which would be the "what makes a machine human" strain with Asimov's robots, Short Circuit, Dr. Who's Cybermen (had to mention it didn't I) etc. Perhaps you could do some sort of compare on these two types. Don't know, not very good at that sort of thing. Hope this helps.

I seem to remember a computer in one of the Lazarus Long books which becomes self-aware; the awareness is then transferred into a body; this being Heinlein the body is beautiful, female, 26 years old, with long dark hair, and has exotic sex with LL.

***B

Weird Science - where the two geeky high school kids make the perfect women, wish I could remember the names.

Was she not Kelly Le Brock? They also turned the kitchen blue if memory serves. (Strangely I liked this film at a certain age. Hmmm)

HAL in 2001

I don´t think that counts as a man. But are we just talking mechanical men here, electronic men or simply "made up" men as in Frankenstein and Adam?

It is Mund's thread, but my interpretation was "man-made" people; be they electronic, made from spare parts, or clay, or whatever.

Which reminds me - there are the Igorth in the more recent Pratchett books.

a woman-made woman called Ben

Frankenstein - A modern Prometheus.

How about mentioning Prometheus then?

(Was no bloke involved there then Ben? )

What about those small green plastic soldiers? Do they count?

Terminator? Semi man made

The Golems from Terry Pratchett

Mel

Iron Man - Ted Hughes.

PP

Thanks Xanatic (small green plastic soldiers?). It's a few days since I laughed out loud.

Computers becoming conscious I'll probably leave out for the moment (there was one which ended the book by telling the humans that they would have to work out how to worship it - I may look that one up).

I'm really after the men made by men, and comparing with creation myths because I'm looking for similarities and parallels. Frankenstein was the modern Prometheus, if I remember, because he was playing god. The monster was his creation.

And are there really so few manufactured women? Many creation myths have all life springing in some sense from a female (but not very active) figure. Surely our new myths could say something different.

Remember the film Westworld?

What are modern manufactured men actually for? There were women too, in this case, and the answer looks very depressing.

The computer which wanted to be worshipped was in Destination Void by Frank Herbert.