Public fears of and legal interference with modern genetic engineering experiments probably stem mainly from such fantasies, not from any real threat or menace. A robot is any machine, which can do all or some of the work of a man without human supervision. Typical is the Ambrose Bierce story, Moxon's Master , in which a mechanical chess player ultimately murders its designer. This is probably the single most familiar theme from science fiction. As soon as people suspected that life is a natural phenomenon, which may appear anywhere conditions are right, and that the other planets are worlds like earth, the possibility that intelligent creatures from other planets might visit us became a common topic of discussion.
Reality is quite different.
Visits from other solar systems are an extremely remote possibility, in view of the vast distances between stars with solar systems and the vast numbers of such systems to choose from. This tradition in literature goes back nearly 2,000 years, but only in the 19 th century did writers of such stories generally try to describe the other planets as they actually were thought to be, rather than as imaginary Cloud-coocoolands in which anything was possible. Nineteenth century fiction about visits from and to other planets had a strong influence on the 19 th century pseudoscientific religion of Theosophy, and through it on much of 20 th century pseudoscience. There is no debate, even among science fiction writers, that this is completely impossible. It not only involves violations of the laws of physics, particularly the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but literally and actually involves gross logical contradictions.