Robot sex. The act of sexual intercourse by a human with a robotic or artificial intelligence type being. Yet, somehow, more than that as well. Intimacy, romance, courting, coitus, oral sex, companionship, and the fundamental way we see ourselves have become interlinked with these two words. This book will examine how science fiction’s portrayal of humanity’s desire for robotic and artificially created humanoid companions influences and reflects changes in our actual desires. I will begin by taking the reader on a journey through the theories that outline basic human desires—we are storytellers, and we need the objects of our desire to mirror many, though not all, aspects of our beings in order that the stories we tell ourselves match our realities. I will continue by looking at three variations on one story—the ‘Blade Runner’ mythos—starting with the original Phillip K. Dick novella Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968/2017), and then moving to the two movies in the series “Blade Runner” (Scott , 1982) and “Blade Runner 2049 ” (Villeneuve, 2017). Using these fictional portrayals, this book will examine the stories we tell ourselves regarding our intimate relations with robots.

There are reasons we seek out differences in our mates; having something mirror us too closely when we know they are not the same makes our skin crawl. What, then, makes a created being—whether partial cyborg or completely mechanistic—human enough, but not too human? Science fiction both creates new species of potential companions and highlights what we already want and how our desires dictate and are in return recreated by what is written. Sex with robots is more than a sci-fi pop-culture phenomenon; it’s a driving force in the latest technological advances in the cybernetic and artificial intelligence sciences. As such, this book fulfills a need to examine both what is in our minds and what is in our capabilities, when it comes to the creation of such beings. Contemporary scholarship does not seat this idea so firmly in the basis of science fiction, nor does it always ask the ethical questions about how we need to address the rights of and our responsibilities toward the new life forms we may soon engender. In the following chapters, I will attempt to move closer to a deeper understanding of those questions by examining the science behind the fiction and what that fiction tells us.

To give a short synopsis of the chapters, this chapter, that is, Chap. 1, will introduce the main theme—that sex robots have multiple uses; they fulfill our desire to create, they are physical manifestations of our storytelling natures, and they are there to be the perfect companion (though they usually are female in form). I will unpack some of the reasons we feel the need, as humans, to explore robotics, cybernetics, and cyborgs, rather than sticking to non-physical/fictional, but fully human, companions, and then look at why we desire our creations, and why that desire morphs into fetishization—which often has a racialized component. Finally, I will discuss the idea that sci-fi is both predictive and reactive, and we tell stories to explain our desires to ourselves and others.

In Chap. 2, I will show how the physical nature of the androids is such that they are excellent examples for this conceit—human skin over an organic-mechanic built frame, they are the ultimate cyborgs, with programmed mental/emotional natures and created bodies, who can, or are trying to, pass as human. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Dick, 1968/2017), the first iteration of the Blade Runner/Electric Sheep mythos, the division between human and non-human, is starkly clear—humans are born, made of flesh and blood, and have created the androids to do work they do not wish to do. However, their humanity is ebbing away, signified by the emotion control box, which is used to dial emotions up or down, and to implant specific desired emotions in their minds. The question then becomes as follows: Are the androids showing more humanity than the humans? This question leads us to another one: How human do robots have to be in order for us to find them desirable? In the book, these questions center on the relationship between a Replicant, Rachael , and the man who seeks to destroy her, Rick Deckard. Some answers come from recent developments in android design and the reactions to it.

Chapter 3 will examine the first Blade Runner movie, Ridley Scott’s adaptation of the original novella (1982). In Blade Runner, Replicants become undetectable, undifferentiated visually, from humans. The newer models, personified by Rachael (modified somewhat from her original textual incarnation), can pass the Voight-Kampff test—a test which distinguishes true emotional responses from implanted ones. This perfect mimicry is our next iteration of how we desire sex robots to behave, and it is desired well in advance of the possibility of building such bots.

It is in this iteration of the story where two theoretical questions appear—that of the racialization of the characters, which is far more apparent in visual media, and the humanity of death—how being able to die, and the fear of it, humanizes the movie’s Replicants. These will be addressed via various studies done both in hypothetical and concrete approaches to race and gender (Allan, 2015; Chu, 2015; Prater & Fung, 2015; Roh, Huang, & Niu, 2015). I will also address what would constitute ‘death’ for a modern-day sex-bot, or, conversely, what makes one alive (Bordo, 1987; Levy, 2007/2008; Smith, 2013). Is it mechanical? Biological? Physiological? How close are we getting to the human experience of birth, life, and death, and how does that closeness tie into how human-feeling the newest developments in AI and robotics are?

In the final descriptive chapter, Chap. 4, I will examine the most current iteration of the story, Blade Runner 2049, and tease out implications for the future of robotics. While the gender dichotomy is very much upheld in this movie, it is considerably more nuanced than in the first Blade Runner.

Throughout each iteration of the story, a thread of interconnectedness has stood out—the androids/Replicants are created by humans and need humans to have any sort of existence at all, but humans need the Replicants, both to do dirty work and as a source of identity. Humans identify themselves against a contrast of Replicant life in a very binary fashion. The creator is meaningless without the creation, for to know what it is to be human, there must be an inhuman correlate. For the latter part of this chapter, I will include interviews with robotics developers about their own desires, and why they chose to make hominoid robots. This, then, will be paired with an analysis of Rachael’s reproduction—the fact that she and Deckard had a child organically in Villeneuve’s movie (2017). What happens when the creator is replaced, the creation can give birth to life, and humanity can no longer claim that as a reason for human exceptionalism? Will our own robotics ever be able to self-replicate?

Chapter 5 will conclude this book and look at the way the stories are changing to be somewhat more inclusive, though certainly there remains a long way to go. It will begin by reiterating some of the themes from Blade Runner 2049 (Villeneuve, 2017), including that of the potential for self-replication. Then it will examine the revolt of the sex robots in Ex Machina, while discussing the perils of giving something an emotive capability while forgetting that rage, hatred, and the will to survive are also emotions. It will also look at the diversity of the webcomic Questionable Content (Jacques , 2003–2019), and examine how it fits into the greater narrative.

Woven into this, the final chapter will also contain a look at the very newest of advancements in cybernetics and AI, examining biofeedback prosthetics, ‘learning’ AI, and following the latest news on Sophia, the Saudi citizen robot. I will continue to examine the testimonials of people who develop relationships with the sex dolls, including pushback from those who are skeptical about the utility of such relationships, and end the chapter with a discussion with the creator of the magazine Strange Horizons about how she is encouraging a more inclusive sci-fi.

Before getting started, certain terms must be defined: