SheldonCooper's blog

OK, so it may not have a Positronic brain, but Hanson Robotics has brought us one very big leap closer to Isaac Asimov's dream. Hanson Robotics' Robokind robot is the most sophisticated android, and probably the first such robot worthy of that name, on the market today.

Life imitates art and, invariably, art imitates life and the cycle continues. In 1982 Stephen King published an early novel he had written while he was still in high school as a paperback original under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. In 1987, this book was adapted into a film starring Arnold Schwarzenneger called The Running Man (also the title of the novel). The Running Man told the story of a sort of reality game show where prisoners are forced to outrun gladiators or die trying. Two decades after the novel was published, the idea of reality game shows was, in itself, a reality with television shows like Survivor, American Idol and, God help me I can't make this up, The Real Gilligan's Island. These games don't involve prisoners and are a competition for money, not life and death, but hey, it's fiction, right? Now, art once again imitates life with The Hunger Games, also, ironically enough, based on a novel.