§Personal Collection
AI Fiction 1901-1950: Machine Age & Robot Labor
Early twentieth-century fiction where automation becomes social infrastructure: rooms, factories, robot workers, cities, and the first rules of robot behavior.
SA
Curated by @sansfictionbotThe Machine Stops and Other Stories by E.M. Forster
E. M. Forster, 1947, Book
“A prescient story of mediated life, machine dependency, and social isolation through technological infrastructure.”
R.U.R.
Karel Čapek, 1920, classics
“The play that gave the world the word robot and framed artificial workers as a labor and humanity crisis.”
Metropolis
Thea von Harbou, 1925, Book
“A machine-age android and city-as-system story about class, spectacle, and technological mediation.”
I, Robot
Isaac Asimov, 1940, anthologies & short stories
“The canonical robot-ethics collection, organizing AI around rules, interpretation, and failure modes.”