One of the first cyborgs, at least in literature,  was the eponymous Professor Jameson of the pulp series of the same name by Neil R. Jones, starting with "The Jameson Satellite" (Amazing Stories July 1931).  Jameson was a scientist who, upon his death in 1958, instructed his nephew to place his body in an experimental rocket and blast it into orbit around the Earth.  Apparently Jameson's nephew didn't have anything better to do, so he complied.  Fast forward about forty million years and Jameson finds his brain, without so much as a by your leave, encased in a robot body by a load of aliens called the Zoromes, who have done a similar thing to themselves and are now off to explore the Universe. 

What is so striking about the Professor Jameson series is that neither our hero nor any of his crewmates seem to have the slightest problem with having been turned into a tea caddy with legs.  You would have thought that being reduced to a sexless organ in a tin devoid of all pain and pleasure would cause at least a moment's regret, but Jameson leaps into his mechanised existence with both, well, I'd say feet, but he doesn't have any.  It's as if all aspects of human existence; love, sex, eating, sleeping, or even reflection were just piddling encumbrances to Reason and best discarded and forgotten. 

Asimov regarded the Zoromes the ancestors of his "benevolent" robots.  I think that explains a lot of things.

Tales of Future Past | Ephemeral Isle | Freelance Writing | Radio Plays | Shop