A Thought About Robots #2

When you think about it, the genre/motif of space marines shouldn't exist even in its own universe. Why? Robots. If space marines as we know them can exist, robots advanced enough to replace them can exist. The military is the largest investor in robotics R&D and it's all leading up to this: the robot soldier.

There's an obvious reason the genre exists though. It can hold genuine drama and action for one. For another, experiencing an interplanetary war through the eyes of a platoon of T-100s is probably dry, scary and unrelatable for most people. So we kind of just ignore this contradiction altogether because we want space marines, dammit! For an obvious example of this, let's look at some James Cameron movies.

In James Cameron's Aliens (A true space marine magnum opus, really only in competition with Starship Troopers,) space marines go to a developing planet colony to wipe out an alien scourge threatening the settlers there. Now within the Alien universe, it's already established that humanoid robots exist. In fact they're in every Alien movie (even if it's basically the same one in the first three). Not only do they exist, they're so human-like that it's impossible to tell them apart from humans. So just give them a gun and some power armor and there you go, space marine out of a job.

In addition to being a stand-in for a human in dangerous situations, they're also a stand-in for a human in a terrible job situation. Think about the handful of people on the Nostromo tanker who have to spend years in stasis while they drift from place to place. If there was ever a job that should be taken by robots, that's it. The robots don't have family lives and don't need life support systems. They could just sit around deactivated until activated by the computer. In Alien one of the seven crew members actually was a robot already, so why not ALL of them? The entire operation could and should be fully automated.

In James Cameron's Avatar, it's essentially the same thing in a crude glance. Space marines go to planet and kill aliens. (Actually I guess the humans are technically the only aliens in this one.) So the difference here is that these uh... indigenous beings are more advanced than xenomorphs and can be reasoned with and even befriended. The small group of humans that doesn't want to just wipe them off of the face of the planet use genetically engineered hybrid bodies, that look like the indigenous beings, to go mingle and establish relations with them. Their consciousness can literally possess and control these empty vessels. These vessels are what are known as "avatars."

So what they're saying is that in a world where you can quantum leap into another body which happens to be a human-made hybrid of two different species, unmanned aircraft don't exist, unmanned mech units don't exist, and robotic soldiers/avatar soldiers don't exist? Come on!