Robot Fiction

Meet Sam Thornton. He collects souls. Sam’s job is to collect the souls of the damned, and ensure they are dispatched to the appropriate destination. But when he’s sent to collect the soul of a young woman he believes to be innocent of the horrific crime that’s doomed her to Hell, he says something no Collector has ever said before... “No.”

On a winter’s day in a British town, 12-year-old Alex receives a package in the mail: an old tin robot from his grandfather. “This one is special,” says the enclosed note, and when strange events start occurring around him, Alex suspects this small toy is more than special; it might be deadly. Right as things get out of hand, Alex’s grandfather arrives, pulling him away from an attack - and his otherwise humdrum world of friends, bullies, and homework - and into the macabre magic of an ancient family feud.

What's really going on? Who's really in charge? You have NO. F***KING. IDEA. In the near future, an art-school dropout, an AIDS baby, a tech-activist, and an RPG-obsessed blogger live in a world where your online identity is at least as important as your physical one. Getting disconnected is a punishment worse than imprisonment, but someone's got to stand up to Government Inc. - whatever the cost.

Sometimes it's not easy being a mutant thug. The space station Belvaille, once the center of civilization, is nearly deserted because of the new government's policies. Hank makes do by working odd jobs, but he isn't sure how long those, or the city, can last.

Finn’s best robot bud, Foggy, comes down with a weird virus while exploring a planet full of dancing robots. But he won’t let Finn help him. Foggy only wants to dance the Hokey Pokey with his new robot friends! Now Finn and Explorers Troop 301 have to find a cure before the robots attack. But can Finn also fix his friendship with Foggy? Or will his robot BFF stay on the two-stepping planet forever?

How close would you hold those you love, when the end comes? In a society where self-preservation is as much an art as a science, Norah and Arthur are learning how to co-exist in their new little world. Though they hardly know each other, everything seems to be going perfectly - from the home they're building together to the ring on Norah's finger. But when the couple bring home a mysterious creature to seal in their loft space, they both must face a devastating truth which tests their bonds to family, memory, and each other forever.

Get ready for your first holoball match! Jojo is the newest member on his team. He’s had to make lots of changes so he can play—he’s a cyborg now, which means he’s part human and part robot! His new additions allow him to see and play with holograms and have the entire internet available to him at all times. He must work together with his teammates to outwit the other team and score a victory!

Alex has been saved from the fate that awaited her in Bedlam, but in freeing her, Niall has released others of their kind into the population. Now, as Warder, he must find them and persuade them to swap their new-found liberty for security in the courts - but is the price of sanctuary to swap one cage for another?

Jack and his fellow students are now well into their School of Thought training and are "sidekicking" for official, card-carrying super heroes. But, even though Jack feels more at home in the Imagine Nation, he's still hiding secrets from his friends Skerren and Allegra, both about his shocking connection to their enemy Revile and about his "Top Secret" school assignment, which involves investigating the RÜstov computer virus that affects the Mechas.

Livvy and Jayden are the stars of their school's robotics team. Livvy is especially enthusiastic because her own mother works in a robotics lab and experiments with artificial intelligence. To impress her mom, Livvy and Jayden build a robot. Livvy wants to name their robot "Francine", but Jayden thinks that's too silly for their creation. Desperate to win, Livvy and Jayden "borrow" an artificial intelligence module. They soon realize they've made a terrible mistake. Francine has too much brain power. She's alive! And using this newly gained brain power to dream up a deadly contest!

Ever since Stanley Lambchop was flattened by a bulletin board, each day brings new adventures! Stanley likes to follow the rules, but he can get carried away sometimes when listening to his best friend, Marco. And the last thing Stanley wants to do is get in trouble…again. When Ms. Root introduces Classroom 2E to movable robots called Zoombots, Stanley tries to follow her coding directions exactly. But when Marco just wants to have the fastest robot in class, trouble may be ahead! Can Stanley and Marco win a robot race while following the rules, and will Stanley learn to speak up for himself?

Frank Einstein (kid-genius, scientist, and inventor) and his best friend, Watson, along with Klink (a self-assembled artificial-intelligence entity) and Klank (a mostly self-assembled and artificial almost-intelligence entity), once again find themselves in competition with T. Edison, their classmate and arch-rival, this time studying the science and mysteries of the universe!

Finn Caspian, his three best friends, and his robot Foggy are excited to explore a brand-new planet...until Finn’s mom makes them bring along an annoying new robot named Voltronix Zu. Putting up with Voltronix’s bragging is bad enough, but when he accidentally turns the planet inside out, the Explorers get attacked by angry rock giants! Can the four friends find a way to save the planet - and the bubble aliens who live there - before Voltronix causes a volcanic disaster?

When Unit Four - a biological soft robot built and stored high above the Jovian atmosphere - is activated for the first time, it’s in crisis mode. Aliens are attacking the Helium-3 mine it was created to oversee, and now its sole purpose is to defend Earth’s largest energy resource from the invaders in ship-to-ship combat. But something’s wrong. Unit Four doesn’t feel quite right. There are files in its databanks it can’t account for, unusual chemical combinations roaring through its pipes, and the primers it possesses on the aliens are suspiciously sparse.

Evelyn has a constant need for perfection that’s blown some fuses among her robotics teammates, and she’s worried nobody’s taking the upcoming competition seriously. Allie is new to school, and she’s had a history of short-circuiting on teachers and other kids. So when Allie is assigned to the robotics team as a last resort, all Evelyn can see is just another wrench in the works!

Rafe and Jimmy, two misunderstood "troublemakers", are finally up to something good. They're in charge of a huge celebration of books and reading - but when a small issue snowballs into a big problem that threatens to derail the whole event, they need to work fast to keep things on track! And the best part? Rafe and Jimmy are joined by the funniest storytellers they know, including Jamie Grimm from I Funny, Jacky Ha-Ha, the Kidd family of Treasure Hunters, and super-genius Max Einstein - everyone's favorite characters from James Patterson's best-selling series for kids!

A richly funny and fantastical novel about the strangeness at the heart of even the most ordinary lives, from one of South Korea’s most acclaimed novelists.

¡Yo sé que soy diferente! Me llamo Hunter, tengo 17 años y medio y desde que me acuerdo, mi fuerza y capacidad intelectual son superiores a las de mis compañeros. Un robot de unos 40 cm de alto, pero idéntico a mí, aparece en mi dormitorio una mañana al lado del ordenador y empieza hablarme. Este robot va a cambiar totalmente mi vida y la del Planeta Azul. Se llama Ishy. Un extraño maletín que mi madre me entrega, explicándome como ella también fue diferente desde niña, empieza a ser el hilo del que tirar para averiguar quien soy realmente.

This anthology, with an introduction by Robert Silverberg, offers a sweeping survey of robots as depicted throughout literature. Since the Iliad—in which we are shown golden statues built by Hephaestus “with minds and wisdoms”—humans have been fascinated by the idea of artificial life. From the Argonautica to the medieval Jewish legend of the Golem and Ambrose Bierce’s tale of a chess-playing robot, the idea of what robots are—and who creates them—can be drastically different.

They came from the north and the city fell. The land of Falanor has been invaded by an albino army, the Army of Iron. A small band of heroes led by Kell, a magnificent and brutal hero, breaks out to warn the king. Fighting their way south, betrayal follows battle, battle follows deviation, and they are attacked on all quarters by deadly warriors, monstrous Harvesters who drain blood from their victims to feed their masters. And worse is to come, for Kell is anything but a hero.