Need advice from club members RE: Robot VS Android

[Dennis]

Robot VS Android
We just got some feedback from our beta readers, as usual, it was constructive and insightful. Thanks beta readers.

I have two questions and I’m hoping for some comments from the Goodreads book club members.

The book is futuristic, there are humanlike house helpers and then there are the “mechs” who definitely don’t look human, they can be spiderlike or snakelike, etc. A beta read thinks we should call them all androids, we are calling them all robots.

1 – Would it be confusing to you, the reader if we called some robots (the mechs) and some androids (the humanlike)?

2 – Is the term android as popular/recognizable a term as robot for the general reader?

The book is the Neuromorphs [http://dennismeredith.com/the-neuromo...] and please note I do not add the link for promotion, just if you need/want more information.

Regards,

Joni
Joanne Meredith
editor@glyphus.com

[Carro]

1. No. I would find it much clearer to call human-like "robots" androids and the not- human like ones robots. Robots always says "mechanisms showing" to me.

2. What is a general reader ? :) I was under the impression most sf and fantasy readers are people who read a lot of sf/fantasy - and if a term isn't known it makes the book more interesting (providing there aren't too many unknowns). Anyway, Star Trek's Data is an Android, so anyone having seen that would know the term.

[Krazykiwi]

I agree with Carro.

1. Androids = robots designed to look like humans, they're a subset of robots in general. And no, it's not confusing, that'd be like being confused that convertibles are a kind of car.

2. See 1. Android is a subset of robot - I'd say it's a pretty widely known one, but within SF in particular, it's very widely known. To the point it sounds like your beta with this particular hangup is either not genre-savvy or is a mega Star Wars fan (Star Wars calls them all "droids" because that's a trademark owned by Lucasfilm, but they are very careful to never call anything either an android or a robot.)

[Dennis]

Carro and Krazykiwi,

Thank you both for your comments.

And thank you for the trademark information, I did not know that! I love MentalFloss and just found this http://mentalfloss.com/article/13087/...

We indie publishers really do depend on readers to help us get things right. :0)

[Krazykiwi]

Actually, I'm surprised the TM was so recent. I mentioned it because I remember having somewhat rabid nerd arguments on the school playgrounds back in the early 80's over the differences between droids, androids and robots, and wanting to beat the Star Wars kids with a stick over their insistence on that word.

I didn't though. Use a stick on them, that is.

[Steven]

It's a bit more complicated, because you can have cyborgs and replicants--which I equate to androids but they're organically grown. In fact, the original title for Blade Runner was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
I used MECHs in two of my books: MECH = "Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans." I suppose the six-million-dollar man would be a MECH.
r/Steve

[Dennis]

Thanks for your comment.

[Steven]

Dennis,
I like YOUR comment "We indie publishers really do depend on readers to help us get things right." I made a major gaffe in my book More than Human: The Mensa Contagion where I postulated that landing on Mars in a shuttle with huge parachutes would be possible. Of course, Mark Weir made a similar gaffe with his opening in The Martian. Parachutes won't work and even severe storms won't have enough force in that rarefied atmosphere. I had beta-readers for my book, but I'm an ex-scientist and should have known better! Fortunately no reader has come forward to mention this, so I can still own up to it.
r/Steve
PS. Weir is interviewed in the NY Times Book Review today. Can you believe he's never read Dune? I read it when it came out in 1965! Yeah, that dates me...sigh.