After a sojourn due to Father’s Day, when we ran the very well received Jo Walton episode, Gary and I are are back on deck to discuss young adult science fiction, Ian McDonald, his new novel Planesrunner, Daryl Gregory and his new collection, robots and computerised houses, and a bit of waffle on the subject of Orson Scott Card and “Hamlet’s Father”. As always we hope you enjoy the podcast. See you next week!
Re: Mutants
Of course, the greatest mutant from 50’s SF is one that many forget IS a mutant:
Godzilla.
Oh, and the Daleks. Must not forget the Daleks started off as mutants…
Hi! I’m a new listener, here via Galactic Suburbia. I listened with interest to your robot discussion in this podcast, and I felt like the Robots Are Dumb position could have been usefully extended with a bit of disability analysis. Dishwashers are great, but they don’t load and and unload themselves. Nanobot house cleaners are great, but they can’t fetch and carry, or pick a person up when they fall. Something (steampunk pneumatic tubes!) that delivers something to the bedside might be great, but they can’t come with a person to the supermarket to get things off the shelves and run the self-checkouts. And we have a mechanism to make people – but people need to be paid, people don’t turn up, people get sick, and sometimes PWDs might like a little privacy, when it comes to showering and arse-wiping and pressing the buttons at the ATM.
While there might be workarounds to some of these, I can see a theoretical role for humanoid multi-purpose mobile robots for the rich disabled folk of the future – if we get to making those before we get to fixing all medical issues ever.