Robots: Three Fantasies and One Big Cold Reality

Perrin, Noel. "Robots: Three Fantasies and One Big Cold Reality." Aliens: The Anthropology of Science Fiction. George E. Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin, eds. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1987.

The fantasies are Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Noon: 22nd Century, I. Asimov's I, Robot, and A. C. Clarke's The City and the Stars (with reference to E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops"). The reality is real-world robots coming on-line. See for work and human purpose in worlds with many robots.