Automata

by S. Fowler Wright

A tale of the last man on earth, and the triumph of the Machine Age

Genres: Science Fiction

8 pages, ebook

Published September 1, 1929

About the author

Sydney Fowler Wright (January 6, 1874 – February 25, 1965) was a prolific British editor, poet, science fiction author, writer of screenplays, mystery fiction and works in other genres. Most of his work is published as by "S. Fowler Wright", and he also wrote as Sydney Fowler and Anthony Wingrave.

Reviews

[Per · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tal...
http://www.sfw.org.uk/automata.shtml

From The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction:

[...] a short three-part story presenting an evolutionary view of life on earth where machine intelligence plays a key role. Part I, set in the [1929] present, pictures a world where machines begin to fulfill their promise of freeing man from the necessity of work. Part II shows a future world where this promise is totally fulfilled, and all household tasks are performed by automata. Part III, in the far distant future, pictures the last man on earth; he works for the automata, now the predominant species. In a universe where "law and order rule," in a universe that "is itself a machine, worked by mathematical, unchanging law," machines function more harmoniously than erratic, emotional man, so they have survived and man has died out.