Robots are one of Science Fiction’s major icons (along with time travel, spaceships and laser guns). I have been slowly working my way through the history of mechanical beings with a focus on one type in particular: the tin robot. The tin robot is an obvious mechanical machine in roughly human shape and size. There are plenty of “hidden robots”, what Philip K. Dick called a replicant, which I have done much on. These masqueraders don’t interest me the way that ‘droids and Iron Giants do. Not sure why that is, but here they are: the tin robots, in roughly chronological order.
Before 1920
(1818-1920) Robots Before the Pulps
(1893-1999) Tin Robot: An Evolutionary Search
1920s
(1920-1972) Introducing…For the First Time…Robots!
(1926-1944) Weird Tales & Robot Science Fiction
(1926-1947) The Menace of the Machine Man: A Robot Tradition
(1926-1954) Robot Pulp History in 24 Covers
(1927) The Master-Minds of Mars by Carl H. Claudy
(1928-1936) Hugo’s Robots: The Gernsback Years
(1928-1951) The Comet Doom: SF Second Chance
(1929-1938) Sloane’s Second-Hand Robots
1930s
(1930-1932) Robots of Adventure: The Clayton Astounding
(1931-1951) Neil R. Jones’s Zoromes Series
(1937-1940) The Robots of Thrilling Mystery
(1938-1983) Return of the Giant Robot II
(1939) 1939 Was the Year of the Robot
(1939-1967) Adam Link: The Autobiography of a Mechanical Man
1940s
(1940-1951) Captain Future – An Overview
(1940-1959) The Robots of Superman Part 1
(1940-1999) I Robot: The Science Fiction Mysteries of Isaac Asimov
(1941) John Carter and the Robots of Mars
(1941-1949) Robots in the 1940s Golden Age
(1942-1953) The Robot Menace in Captain Marvel Adventures
(1944-1954) More Golden Age Robots
(1945-1979) The Return of the Giant Robot
(1947-1971) The Robots of Batman
1950s
(1951-1954) Robots in the 1950s Golden Age
(1952-1969) The Robots of Space Adventures
(1953-1956) The Ruum Stories of Arthur Porges
(1955-1969) DC’s World of Silver Age Robots
(1955-196o) More Silver Age Robots Part 1
(1955-1967) Adam Link in the Comics
(1959-1976) The Robots of Superman Part 2
1960s
(1960-1986) Bolos: Relics of War
(1960-1963) More Silver Age Robots Part 2
(1963-1974) Fred Saberhagen’s Berserkers
(1963-1968) More Silver Age Robots Part 3
1970s
(1970-1979) Bronze Age Robots: 1970s
More to come…only the tip of the metallic iceberg…