#public domain robots

[rjalker]

coffin grasshopper robot.

(the guy is naked because he had to swim to shore from a shipwreck and had to take his clothes off to not get pulled under)

[ID: A painted cover for the July edition of the magazine Astounding Stories, which originally cost 20 cents, showing a scene from The Doom From Planet 4, by Jack Williamson. We see a naked man staring in shock at a large robot that is shaped like a coffin with four articulated legs, a searchlight mounted on its back, and two arms. On its back is a raised ring surrounded by white light. The two are surrounded by rocks, and on a mountain in the background is a larger version of the ring, outlined against a stormy black sky. End ID.]

___

Suddenly he was struck with the thought that it was not thunder that had wakened him. The noise he had heard had not the rumbling or booming quality of thunder. As he stood there he again became conscious of the low, whirring sound, behind him. He whirled around to face it. The shock of what he saw left him momentarily dizzy and trembling—though undoubtedly his surroundings had much to do with its effect upon him.

The sound came from a glistening metal machine which stood half-hidden in the brush a dozen yards away looking at him!

The thing was made of a lustrous, silvery metal, which Dan afterwards supposed to be aluminum, or some alloy of that metal. Its gleaming case was shaped more like a coffin, or an Egyptian mummy-case, than any other object with which he was familiar, though rather larger than either.

That is, it was an oblong metal box, tapering toward the ends, with the greatest width forward of the middle. Twin tubes projected from the end of it, lenses in them glistening like eyes. Just below them sprang out steely, glistening tentacles several feet long, writhing and twitching as if they were alive. The tangle of green brush hid the thing's legs, so that Dan could not see them.

Suddenly it sprang toward him, rising ten feet high and covering half the distance between them. It alighted easily upon the two long, jointed metal limbs upon which it had leapt, and continued to keep the lens-tubes turned toward Dan, so he knew that the grotesque metal thing was watching him.

The limbs, he observed, were similar to the hind legs of a grasshopper, both in shape and position. And evidently the thing leapt upon them in about the same way. Then he noticed another curious thing about it.

Three little bars of metal projected above the thickest part of its case, on the upper side. Their ends were joined by a little ring, three inches across. The tiny metal ring glowed with purple luminosity. A purple haze seemed to cling about it, as to the huge ring Dan had seen on the towers above the peak. And suspended inside this ring was a tiny metal needle, shimmering with pulsating white fire.

On the back of this metal monster was a miniature replica of the strange mechanism upon the pinnacle. The little needle pointed up the canyon. A glance that way showed Dan that it pointed at the great device upon the mountain, which looked even more brilliant on this gloomy morning than in the uncertain radiance of the moon. The colossal ring was shrouded in a splendid mantle of purple flame; and the long, slender needle, which seemed to have swung on down to follow Mars below the horizon, still throbbed with scintillating white fire.

For several minutes the two stood there, studying each other. A naked man, tense and bewildered in the presence of mysterious forces—and a grotesque machine, cased in gleaming white metal, whose parts seemed to duplicate most of the functions of a living creature.

Then one of the writhing tentacles that shot from the "head" of the machine reached back under the metal case, and reappeared grasping what appeared to be a flat disk of emerald, two inches across and half an inch thick.

This green disk it held up, with a flat side toward Dan. There was no sound, but a flash of green light came from it, cutting a wide swath into the jungle, and littering its path with smoking and flaming debris.

But Dan, expecting something of the kind, had flung himself sidewise into the shelter of the boulder beside which he had slept. Behind it, he gathered his feet under him, picked up a rock of convenient size for throwing, and waited, ready and alert.

He heard the soft humming sound on the other side of the boulder. A glittering object flashed above him. Crashing through the brush the metal monster came to earth on the same side of the boulder with him.

But the metal thing had not turned in its flight: consequently its rear end was toward Dan. As it began cumberously to turn about, he hurled his rock with an accuracy that came of a boyhood on the farm. Instinct had made him try for the little ring and needle on the back of the monster, apparently its most vulnerable part.

Whether by luck or skill, the rock struck the gleaming ring, crushing it against the needle—and instant paralysis overtook the metal thing. Its tentacles and limbs became fixed and rigid, and it toppled over in the brush.

Dan walked over to it, and examined it briefly. The green disk had fallen on the ground, and he picked it up. It was made of emerald crystal, it had a little knob of glistening metal set in one side. Rather afraid of it, Dan forebore to twist the knob. But he still clutched it in his hand a few moments later, when, partly for fear that others of its kind would come to succor the fallen monster, and partly to secure shelter from the threatening rain, he retired into the shadows of the tangled jungle.

[kevinarsenault]

[huntthemouse]

Y2K Bug Mickey

207/365 #hunt the bug

figures crowdstrike would bring back memories of one of the very few disasters we went out of our way to prevent as much as possible. gee wilkers i wish we did that more often. anyway, metal/bug mickey, with the ability to crash computers!

I am making 365 new versions of Mickey Mouse for the public domain and releasing them under public domain all year long.

You can join the initiative to #hunt the mouse or suggest a theme yourself via my ask box.

[deepdreamnights]

Welcome to Radio UltraMerica, Saint Christmas VIth on the mic, broadcasting perpendicularly across all three-and-a-half dimensional realities. Surging up the charts this week, we have Brie and T with 'The B-Side', sang in the primal tongue of Panda-Stroke-Icebucket-9.

--

Every Sunday for the foreseeable I'll be releasing songs from other worlds and dimensions plucked from the Radio UltraMerica airwaves by myself in continued defiance of conceptual law.

Explanation under the fold, more songs here.

My second 'self portrait' song, using the jpg data from a tiny version of this janked image:

Style prompt was: COY SEDUCTIVE FEMALE SINGER 1980S new wave rock, electric lute, synth, bass, guitar. female chorus, mysterious & technoy

The song posted above was made using autogenerated lyrics and/or have not been modified/iterated extensively. As such it does not meet the minimum expression threshold and are in the public domain.

[generativesluice]

30 Free AI generated Robots

For use as atock art, character tokens, or whatever else.

Donations/Tips are accepted via paypal.

These images are free to use, all generated within Midjourney. These unedited images were not subject to sufficient interference by humans to meet the minimal expression standard, and are, as such, public domain.

[yourbelovedissy]

Hello my dearest Tungle friends

I have this here robo girl, as you can see Let's call her, uhhh... RH0N-D4 (Rhonda) I bought her as an adoptable a loooooong time ago But I do virtually nothing w/ her, and have little interest in using her for anything

Soooo! I'm following in @publicdomaincharacters' footsteps As of this post, I waver any/all rights to this character and design She's public domain now Enjoy her to the fullest extent you desire <3

[thursdayisbetterthanfriday]

[geezerwench]

Our demise as a species.

[ninebaalart]

Glass version of the Killer Robot

[the-unspeakable-tsar]

Illustrious Magenta: Interview One. Manowar.

Chapter One

In which Tintin interviews a robotic savior.

Illustrious Magenta, Day One

{Manowar sat cross-legged on the couch, while Tintin sat opposite it. Its face remains as still as something composed of a clay-like semi-plastic can. It fiddled nervously with the buttons on its Hawaiian shirt as they spoke.}

What’s the purpose of all of this?

I’m doing a series of interviews with the crew and I want to give us a sense of history while we’re here.

Fair enough. You want me to start at the beginning, right? I was constructed by a people whose name roughly translates as Utopians. They lived in what is modern-day Brazil. I was one of many Manowars who were called the “Keepers of the White Streak of Peace” which meant that we were tasked with keeping the peace, moderating conflict, and giving aid wherever we could. After the Utopians died out, the other Manowars gradually shut down until there was just me alone in the jungle. I was alone until I was found in 1939 by an American archeologist named Simms. I fought Nazis, saboteurs, and fascists in the 40s, and after the war’s conclusion I did some light work for the CIA using the name Daniel Sanders, but I didn’t stay long. The name was ill-suited to me along with the plastic surgery they attempted on me to make me look more like a man. 

You don’t see yourself as a man?

{Manowar shook its head}

No, far from it, I’m not a man. I’m an object with ideas. I’m not a he, I am an it, Mister Tintin. The Utopians are gone and have been gone for centuries now, but the rest of humanity remains. It’s my duty to help humanity as a tool of peace. I couldn’t do that with the CIA, but the folks at Adventure Inc. were able to help me find a purpose here among the stars.  I’m the ultimate tool for peace here to help you and the others survive on this new planet and hopefully, we can build a new Utopia together. 

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

Thinking about how, like ... if you want to have demon girls, and you want to reference existing demons, then you have the entire canon of demonology to go off of. And they're all in the public domain! Yeah, there's Lucifer (girl). Yeah, there's Asmodeus (girl). Yeah, there's Stolas (girl). The Lesser Key of Solomon alone contains 72 possible (girl)s!

With robots, however, it's different. There are in fact relatively very few robots in the public domain, (girl) or otherwise; there's no "greater canon" from which you can draw. Like what robots are there in the public domain? Quik and Silva? Tik-Tok of Oz? Fucking Pinnochio? Maschinenmensch from Metropolis isn't actually in the public domain in all jurisdictions. By Talos-from-Greek-mythology this can't be happening! Nor is there, like ... an equivalent of the whole "demons are from Hell/the Netherworld/whatever" thing for robots, they don't have a fixed origin or setting.

Basically, you pretty much have to create your own characters and the situation for them to be in. Which, I mean, that does have own advantages! But preexisting recognizability is not one of them.

[rjalker]

No weapon has ever been frightful enough to put a stop to war— perhaps because we never before had any that thought for themselves!

[ID: The cover for the magazine Galaxy Science Fiction from January 1953, which cost 35 US Cents. It shows a color painting of a scene from The Defenders, by Philip K. Dick, showing a robot standing in front of a rocket plane, standing on burnt black ground with a smoky sky and ruined cities in the background. The robot is made of shining grey metal, and is very humanoid in shape, with very thin limbs with larger joints on the feet, knees, elbows and shoulders. It has a large dome for a head. In its hands it holds a large, futuristic gun. It has its head turned to look over its shoulder at another robot climbing into the plane. End ID.]

[pd-characters-of-the-day]

Here are 2 public domain villains,Sikandur the Robot Master and X5328B from dell comics

[huntthemouse]

Retro Futuristic Mickey

167/365 #hunt the mouse

I agree! So I did this- I love the retro blues of retro robots but also just how a lot of them kind of don't even attempt to have a face- it's as if they are intentionally created to be tools as opposed to being given human-like qualities.

I am making 365 new versions of Mickey Mouse for the public domain and releasing them under public domain all year long.

You can join the initiative to #hunt the mouse or suggest a theme yourself via my ask box.

[deepdreamnights]

Welcome to Radio UltraMerica, Saint Christmas the VIth on the mic, broadcasting perpendicularly across all three-and-a-half dimensional realities!

And next we have a song by a handsome group of beings from the Infinikansas cornwastes. It's a song about letting go, but the charts aren't listening, it's been at the πth spot on the charts for 9 weeks, with no signs of shaking loose. That's right, it's the incredibly difficult to introduce 'Is this-' by ми морські коники.

--

Every Sunday for the foreseeable I'll be releasing songs from other worlds and dimensions plucked from the Radio UltraMerica airwaves by myself in continued defiance of conceptual law.

lyrics under the fold

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[titleknown]

Fun fact: The short this is from is public domain, which I learned about via @therobotmonster and @siphersaysstuff riffing on it!