Robots started their fictional lives as stand-ins for the oppressed working class, and have gone through an array of iterations over the last century. They’ve been created by deluded scientists, attempted to take over the world, desperately sought cat pictures, and been terribly mistreated by humans. Today’s essay from James Patrick Kelly - which appeared in his collection The Book of Bots from Fairwood Press - takes us for a spin through the history of literary robots.