Talk:Frankenstein complex

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Frankenstein is the first robot in literature? - How 'bout pygmalion, off the top of my head?


 * or for that matter, what about a golem, which Frankenstein's creation resembles more than it does a "mechanical man". --Davecampbell (talk) 04:32, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Someone do some research on this:

Asimov, I. (1978). The Machine and the Robot. In P. S. Warrick, M. H. Greenberg & J. D. Olander (Eds.), Science Fiction: Contemporary Mythology: Harper and Row.

I found the source. That's like doing helpful work... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.175.108.130 (talk) 00:41, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I tracked down a copy of this source, and in it Asimov says "I wrote a series of influential robot stories that self-consciously combated the "Frankenstein complex" ans made of the robots the servants, friends, and allies of humanity." I think it should be added to the citation. WubbGmbaa (talk) 18:19, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
 * There. It hath been cited WubbGmbaa (talk) 18:46, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Here's another possible one, maintains very similar wording to the article, so either it came from WikiPedia or this article came from it. If it is the latter, maybe could site this?? Not sure it's very credible, though..... http://frankenstein.monstrous.com/the_frankenstein_complex.htm

Also, Pygmalion was in 1912, right?? That's nearly 100 years after the original version of Frankenstein, so I don't think that needs edited. I'm not sure "robot" is the right terminology, though - maybe something a little broader, like "humanoid"? "Golem" doesn't really seem relevant. -- WubbGmbaa (talk) 20:33, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Asimov used the term "Frankenstein complex" in the short story "Lenny", published in the January 1958 issue of Infinity Science Fiction. In his introduction to the retrospective collection The Rest of the Robots, first published in 1964, Asimov says of the figure of the robot in his early stories: "It was incapable of harming men, yet it was victimized by human beings who, suffering from a 'Frankenstein complex (as I called it in some of my stories), insisted on considering the poor machines to be deadly dangerous creatures." This quotation is from page 15 of the Panther (London: 1968) edition of The Rest of the Robots. Since Asimov says "some of my stories" the expression may also appear in one or more stories other than "Lenny", but I'm not aware of any example in the robot stories of the 1940s and 1950s. So the use in "Lenny" in 1958 is possibly the first use of the expression by Asimov. In any event, it's the first I can find so far. Metamagician3000 (talk) 14:53, 5 February 2017 (UTC)