Not far into our future, the dazzling technology that runs our world turns against us. Controlled by a childlike—yet massively powerful—artificial intelligence known as Archos, the global network of machines on which our world has grown dependent suddenly becomes an implacable, deadly foe. At Zero Hour—the moment the robots attack—the human race is almost annihilated, but as its scattered remnants regroup, humanity for the first time unites in a determined effort to fight back. This is the oral history of that conflict, told by an international cast of survivors who experienced this long and bloody confrontation with the machines. Brilliantly conceived and amazingly detailed, Robopocalypse is an action-packed epic with chilling implications about the real technology that surrounds us.

It’s the robots’ world, we just live in it…for now.

The novel is currently being adapted to the big screen by Steven Spielberg, and is scheduled for release on July 4th 2013. Daniel’s next novel, Amped, will be released by Doubleday on June 5th, 2012. In the mean time, you can already follow its main character, Samantha Blex, on Facebook and twitter.

Regarding robotics, we’ll look at self-awareness, robots as mirrors for the human condition and the extent at which AIs should be given responsibility. We then dive into Isaac Asimov’s work, since Bear is an expert after writing a sequel to the foundation series. He tells us a few of Asimov’s secrets to make popular science fiction and how Asimov’s rules should be applied to robotics, if we don’t want to loose control.

Finally, Bear gives us his vision of the world and tells us how his talent in bringing pieces together within one story has gotten him helping the U.S. Army, the CIA and Homeland Security.

To give you a taste of his work, Christine will read an excerpt from Mariposa describing the early Mind Design artificial intelligence called Jones, which leads to the AIs in Queen of Angels, Slant, and Moving Mars. Check out the Promo for his latest book below.

Futurama portrays society in the 31st-century. The show provides a very funny account of the ever increasing incorporation of technology into our lives. True to science-fiction tradition, the future is filled with robots albeit those with terrible personalities and odd responsibilities including growing replacement hair for humans.

In this episode, Cohen tells us about how he creates robots for television and describes his vision of the future of human society.

A couple months ago, we had the chance to visit this extraordinary museum where Gyger was giving a guided tour of a new exhibition about Galactic Hits. Over the past 10 years, 30 temporary exhibitions have been held or created there. We then wandered through alleys of shelves, since the museum owns a large, fabulous collection consisting of more than 50’000 books (in French, English, German and even Ouzbek, and many more), some of which are very old and/or rare. There are also nearly 20’000 documents and items related to science fiction and its imagery such as posters, toys, works of art and much more. This makes of the Maison d’Ailleurs a top research center for scholars, students or journalists from around the world who come for their theses, personal research and/or image research.

In this interview, we’ll be looking at the history of robotics in science fiction. Gyger tells us how science fiction can give ideas as to how robots can be used in our society or to mirror the human condition. We then discuss how scientists and science fiction writers can contribute to each other’s field. Finally, in a surprising development we discuss the worries of Science Fiction writers about technology advancing so fast (singularity), that it becomes difficult to write stories about the future.

Jack Graham has an amazing blog called Lonesome Robot which showcases his work in science fiction and role playing games.