On Machines XX - Between Fiction and Science Fiction

"The humans have a curious force they call ambition. It drives them, and, through them, it drives us. This force which keeps them active, we lack. Perhaps, in time, we machines will acquire it." (John Wyndham, "The Lost Machine", 1932)

"There are so many disadvantages in human construction which do not occur in us machines. [...] Some little thing here or there breaks - they stop working and then, in a short time, they are decomposing. Had he been a machine, like myself, I could have mended him, replaced the broken parts and made him as good as new, but with these animal structures one is almost helpless." (John Wyndham, "The Lost Machine", 1932)

"There’s an affinity between men and the machines they make. They make them out of their own brains, really, a sort of mental conception and gestation, and the result responds to the mind that created them, and to all human minds that understand and manipulate them." (Catherine L Moore, "NoWoman Born", 1944)

"The machinery of civilization was a living body, with organismic Man as its brain." (Walter M Miller Jr., "Way of a Rebel", 1954)

"If a machine had broken down, it would have been quickly replaced. But who can replace a man?" (Brian W Aldiss, ‘‘Who Can Replace a Man?", 1958)

"The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets." (William S Burroughs, "Naked Lunch", 1959)

"That perfected machines may one day succeed us is, I remember, an extremely commonplace notion on Earth. It prevails not only among poets and romantics but in all classes of society. Perhaps it is because it is so widespread, born spontaneously in popular imagination, that it irritates scientific minds. Perhaps it is also for this very reason that it contains a germ of truth. Only a germ: Machines will always be machines; the most perfected robot, always a robot." (Pierre Boulle, "Planet of the Apes", 1963)

"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." (Frank Herbert, "Dune", 1965)

"These machines had become old and worn-out, had begun making mistakes; therefore they began to seem almost human." (Philip K Dick & Ray Nelson,"The Ganymede Takeover", 1967)

"A humanoid robot is like any other machine; it can fluctuate between being a benefit and a hazard very rapidly." (Philip K. Dick, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", 1968)

"Man has reached the stage where he evolves through his machines." (Gene Wolfe, "Alien Stones", 1972)

"There was no easy way to heaven, or nirvana, or whatever it was that the faithful sought. Merit was acquired solely by one’s own efforts, not with the aid of machines. An interesting doctrine, and one containing much truth; but there were also times when only machines could do the job." (Arthur C Clarke, "The Fountains of Paradise", 1979)

"The dreams of people are in the machines, a planet network of active imaginations hooked into their made-up, make-believe worlds. Artificial reality is taking over; it has its own children." (Storm Constantine, "Immaculate", 1991)