Last night I got an idea for a SF story, not really a dream, but I was lying in bed thinking. It doesn't seem quite as cool as it did last night, but I guess I'll describe it. If anyone wants to write a story based on this, feel free, just let me read it. And if you get famous, send me a signed copy.

This is the story: There are some self-aware robots, some kind of artificial intelligence machines, and they get left behind or crash-land on a planet during a space mission. There are maybe a couple of them, and they don't have any cotact with humans for thousands of years. The originals build more machines and program them. The machines begin to evolve, using the resources of the planet, but without the constraints of organic beings, and they fill all the niches of the robot society, each an individual machine with a mind of its own. Robots evolve to fill all of the jobs that need to be done and are designed according to their purpose, tiny one, big ones, forming classes and unions. Maybe some are spaceship-robots and go out and eventually contact people again.

Anyway, I guess this is very derivative of like Terminator and several other stories like that, except I wasn't thinking of the robots as being evil, more like exploring the nature of their society and what comes from this ability to evolve without limits on size or shape, according to needs of the society.


(why is [banned term] a "banned term") (Ok that didn't work, why is the common short term for science fiction a "banned term"?)