Among this summer’s anticipated films is Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s prequel to his groundbreaking sci-fi flick, Alien. The plot centers on a crew of inter-galactic explorers – among the cast of characters is a humanoid robot, or android, who sounds decidedly more ominous than say, the Jetson’s old-model household cleaner, Rosey.
Michael Fassbender as the spooky android “David” in a video released as part of a viral ad campaign for the forthcoming film Prometheus, Fassbender’s uncanny performance led us to wonder how current robotic technology compares to science fiction’s common tropes: for example, the good-robot gone bad, or the android who think he’s human. Dennis Cass is a recovering journalist and now science fiction author. He wrote about androids, real and imaginary, for i09.com