18 April 2024

The Story Behind the Lists

As I was posting the latest additions to two of the lists in this blog, I realized I have never explained the reason why this blog exists. So, here is the explanation.

Years ago, I stumbled upon a forum in which the question (as near as I can remember it) was asked, "What is the greatest robot of all time?" I guessed by the narrowness of the results that most people were insufficiently aware of the vastness of the question's scope. There are many robots in the history of film and television, not to mention those in novels, short stories, comic books, comic strips, toys, advertising, radio shows, and plays (R.U.R., anyone?). Robots have been appearing in film for a hundred years. Perhaps, I thought, I could make a list of all robots, at least as they appeared in film and television, to educate others on the robot's impact on popular culture, and to inspire others to explore some of these lesser known movies and television shows. Soon, I began to widen the project to include spaceships, then computers, then weapons—all pertaining to science fiction. Then I started to convert the lists to javascript on one of my sites to facilitate the random generation of elements for my role-playing game, One Robot...One Computer...One Spaceship. Then I made a "Random Concept Generator" for one of my sites that attracted the highest number of hits I ever achieved for any of my domains. Alas, those sites are gone, and I started this blog to preserve the lists and keep them going for anyone who might be interested. The lists receive far less attention here than they did in their previous home, but someday they might approach their former near-glory.

If you find these lists useful or interesting, please feel free to comment.

Be seeing you...