The Wizard of Oz
November 7th, 2008
I seem to be suffering some kind of confluence thing with The Wizard of Oz lately. Catriona’s reading it, the makers of The Sarah Connor Chronicles were reading it and now I was just doing a little extra reading about science fiction that may have influenced AI research in this paper titled Cybernetic Imagination and it also mentions Baum’s Tin Woodsman in The Wizard of Oz as a pre-curser to the 1930s science fiction robots.
I’ve been catching up on this fad called Battlestar Gallactica lately (starting at season 1) and I wouldn’t be surprised…
So when are you going to borrow my copies of the Oz books? I don’t have all of them—I don’t even have all of Baum’s Oz books—but I do have a handful.
Actually, looking at this again—it mentions the Tin Woodman? Does it also mention Tik-Tok? Because he actually is a robot, where the Tin Woodman is more ambiguous—and could be considered a cyborg, if anything.
And Tik-Tok turns up early in the Oz series: book three—Ozma of Oz (1907) if I’m remembering my books correctly. Seven years after the Tin Woodman, true, but still early.
Yes Tik-Tok gets a mention but the Tin Woodman is more well known I think. And yes I would like to borrow your Oz books next time I come around – thanks!