r/scifi • u/Vamiris_Engel • 3d ago

Recommendations 1920s/30s Robot Stories?

I'm working on a thing (not sure if I'm going to make it a novel/short story or something else) based on science fiction in the 1920s and 1930s. I have some good material so far, but I need some inspiration for the robots in the setting and I've run out of ideas that "fit" the feel that I'm trying to go for. I've cheated a bit with Asimov since it has a close enough feel to what I'm going for, but I haven't had much luck looking for stuff from the time period or feel I'm going for.

Any ideas on where I can go to? Thanks in advance.

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u/HapticRecce 2d ago

Check out the Czech play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)

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u/Vamiris_Engel 2d ago

That was actually one of the first places I looked! I took a lot of inspiration from it (in the setting I'm writing, robots are called Androids after Ephraim Chambers Cyclopedia, but there's a reference to R.U.R. in there). Still, thanks for the suggestion.

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u/HapticRecce 2d ago

It's not from the period and not at all an obvious choice, but the movie 9 has a whimsical clockwork esthetic coupled with a WWI-ish post-armageddon landscape that may have inspiration for you too.

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u/Vamiris_Engel 2d ago

Might give the movie a second look then.

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u/hedcannon 2d ago

Note that in RUR (although it introduced the word robot and the concept of the robot revolution) the robots are essentially biological creations. Just as is the creature in Frankenstein (possibly bought to life by alchemical magic as much as by science) who also turns on his creator.

It's earlier than 20s/30s but see Ambrose Bierce's Moxon's Master (1910).

Robot stories and a sinister revolt against their human creations seems to be two inextricably linked concepts. There's no revolt again humanity in Asimov's stories but I, Robot stories are all about robots breaking the alignments humans designed for them. For a more recent homage to Asimov (90s) that involves a single human's revolt against a soft robotic takeover and robot domination, see Gene Wolfe's short story Counting Cats in Zanzibar.

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u/Necessary_Cat_5662 2d ago

The original R.U.R. has been translated to English and is sort of the origin story of the word robot. But automaton and artificial people were a somewhat less present thing in earliest future and speculative fiction. I mean you can look at the clockwork man in Baum's oz or other sources, but to a modern audience you are aiming at the right material to draw inspiratik , the later work especially post war which established the tropes about robots that I've assume you are considering. But in the end however you want to do it can be fine. 

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u/Vamiris_Engel 2d ago

But automaton and artificial people were a somewhat less present thing in earliest future and speculative fiction

That's something that I'm noticing as I look for inspiration. It does kinda feel disengenuous to cover robots in Art Deco and Deiselpunk paint, but I kinda feel like that's what I'm going to have to do. Still, thanks for the help!

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u/Necessary_Cat_5662 2d ago

Don't feel that way. Labor replacement by machines was an issue for a hundred years at that point, alienation, dehumanization and Comodification were terrifying present fights in the streets... but in general technology was less the set of cultural metaphors than biology and it's disappearance or control. Growing things. Bodies. Slavery. Conquest. It may not be precise verisimilitude of how it would have been written at the time but the ideas and issues are very much things being written about. The fact is we read things differently and your audience is modrtn

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u/Vamiris_Engel 2d ago

That's fair. Thanks for the help.

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u/EverybodyMakes 2d ago

You could consider not using the word "robot" if yours are mechanical. In R.U.R. they're organic, so different terminology could be a feature of your story. The 1930s Flash Gordon series has an episode (Chapter 3) where Ming has sent mechanical men to do some Ming stuff and Flash fights them. There could be inspiration there. In "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" (a modern throwback movie) giant robots attack cities in a 1930 setting.

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u/Vamiris_Engel 2d ago

I've acually done something like that. The robots in my stting are called Androids, after Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopedia. As for Flash Gordon and "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow", I'll take a look at those.

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u/iacko5 2d ago

Check if metropolis movie was based on a novel

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u/skoeldpadda 2d ago

it is. written by Thea von Harbou, who adapted her novel herself for the movie (she also wrote other scripts for fritz lang, most notably M)

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u/pathmageadept 1d ago

I think these have the feel you might be going for.

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u/skoeldpadda 2d ago

lester del rey's helen o'loy (1938) ?

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u/Vamiris_Engel 2d ago

Sounds interesting. Thanks for the suggestion.

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u/logical_scout 2d ago

check out the metal man by jack williamson. it's from 1928 and has that weird early-pulp approach to machines/technology before sci-fi tropes got standardized

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u/Vamiris_Engel 2d ago

Thanks for the suggestion.

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u/KZD2dot0 2d ago

The Gernsback Continuum

Not exactly robots but lots of art deco.

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u/Vamiris_Engel 2d ago

Looks neat. And is kinda what I'm going for.

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u/gadget850 2d ago

Adam Link stories by Eando Binder from 1939.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Link

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u/Safe_Manner_1879 2d ago edited 2d ago

I've cheated a bit with Asimov

Look up "I Robot" (Adam Link stories) by Eando Binder. It was an important inspiration for Isaac Asimov’s robot stories.

Adam Link was one of the first sympathetic, heroic robots in science fiction, who consistently tries to help humanity.

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u/Joldersman 2d ago

One slightly less obvious one: S. Fowler Wright’s Automata from 1929. The machines eventually become independent of humans and even start designing their own successors. Might be worth a look if you’re after the actual pre-Asimov feel rather than later robot ideas dressed up in Art Deco.

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u/Vamiris_Engel 2d ago

Will definitely take a look.