20,000 A.D.
by Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat
Tom Jenkins heads into the “Vanishing Woods” to prove that there’s nothing
dangerous about them, but he doesn’t return until six months later, and he refuses to
talk about where he’s been and what he’ seen—but fortunately for us, the titles of
the two Wonder Story stories (“In 20,000 A.D.” in Sep 1930 and “Back to
20,000 A.D.” in Mar 1931) give us a big clue, although it doesn’t tell us that the
world he visits is divided into cold-hearted Masters and their four-armed, giant human
Robots.
The use of the word “robot” had not yet evolved from Čapek’s meaning of a humanoid laborer to the modern usage as a purely mechanical being.
True, he says, the Masters are far advanced, an’ able to do lots o’ thingsas a
result. They’ve learnt everything there was to be learnt, they can live on the earth,
in the air, in the water, or underground; they can travel to the other stars; they know
how the world come about an’ when it’s ending, they think great thoughts an’things
I couldn’t even understand, but, he says, what about the Robots?
“20,000 A.D.” by Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat, in Wonder Stories, September
1930.