> Karel Čapek (inventor of word robot) Funnily enough, his robots were actually androids - biological, rather than mechanical, beings. He also wrote, in 1922,

> Karel Čapek (inventor of word robot) Funnily enough, his robots were actually androids - biological, rather than mechanical, beings. He also wrote, in 1922, a pantheistic gem called The Absolute at Large: mankind finds out how to get energy from matter annihilation. But that frees up "the absolute", which inspires religious devotion ... (Pierre Boule, in "Les jeux de l'esprit", probably wrote up the opposite premise, general triumph of rationalism, with pretty much the same result, general conflict.)