I just finished a great novel by S.M. Peters called Whitechapel Gods. It’s set in Victorian London where alien machine gods are taking over Whitechapel. It’s grimy and steampunky and I haven’t seen anything like it since… since ever.
There’s Primus, chief Modron and God of Mechanus in the D’nD Planescape setting.
From the duology Lear’s Daughter’s by M. Bradley Kellogg; Valla and Lagri, the Sister Goddesses of Fire and Water. In actuality, they are a pair of ancient AI controlled weather control systems; built many millennia ago, but with forgotten origins. The planet they are on can no longer support life naturally ( which is why they were made ), and they each control opposite ends of the climate/weather spectrum, constantly opposing each other to create a dynamic balance. They also keep the population from outbreeding their limited resources, since polluting/overusing the environment gives one of the Sisters an advantage and kills much of the population in a Devastation. As well, they were built as opposing systems because they are sophisticated enough to need stimulation to keep from going insane from boredom over tens of millennia.
I’m a big Gonick fan, too. I’ve tried to read all of his history-based books.
Silver from Sapphire And Steel
Xenogears a game for the playstation a while back. I think it was one of the best plot lines in video game history and would to read it as a series of books.
a bit OT, but lets say I wanted to to be the one to write it, who would I have to contact to get the rights to do so?
I just finished reading a new book by Adam-Troy Castro, Emissaries from the Dead, that involves godlike artificial intelligences called the AIsource who have engineered a bizarre habitat populated by slothlike aliens and dragons inside a thousand-kilometer-long cylindrical asteroid, where all the action of the book takes place, and who may be sinister and murderous or benevolent and kind. Pretty interesting book.
I KNEW I recognized that name! He wrote the companion book to The Amazing Race, My Ox Is Broken!
He also wrote The Unauthorized Harry Potter, which is how I found out about his new Emissaries from the Dead novel – my daughter had The Unauthorized Harry Potter in her stack of books she wanted from the Young Adult section, and I saw his name and said “Oh, hey, that guy’s awesome!” and looked inside the book and saw that he had a new novel out in the “Also by Adam-Troy Castro” list in the front.
I was already familiar with a few of his comic book novels, particularly his “Sinister Six” Spider-Man trilogy, which was – The Gathering of the Sinisister Six, Revenge of the Sinister Six, and The Secret of the Sinister Six, which were the best superhero novels I’ve ever read. And he has a rather distinctive name, so when I saw it on the Harry Potter book and saw that he had a new novel out, I immediately ran to see if they had it in the Science Fiction section, and sure enough, there it was.
And it was definitely worth it. I look forward to seeing the sequels that I presume are forthcoming – Emissaries from the Dead said “An Andrea Cort Novel” on the front cover, so I presume he plans to write more novels set in his AIsource universe.
Dan Simmons’s Hyperion books have a machine god, an Ultimate Intelligence. The first two books are brilliant, the second two very good.
In the Marvel Universe, is the Kree Supreme Intelligence composed of the greatest minds of the Kree race uploaded onto a massive computer, or is it some sort of spiritual aggregate of the actual minds? Because the SI is the de facto Kree god.
The “Moloch Machine” is a famous image from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, although it existed within the film as a visual metaphor, not an actual diety.
The Saviour Machine:
In Marvel comics, the Celestials are space-gods who are machine-like.
For some reason, Futurama has a Robot Devil but no Robot God.
OK, on my return visit I noticed that the Moloch Machine was mentioned in the OP, so in its place I offer… Henry Ford, as idolized in the society depicted in Brave New World. People speak of “Our Ford,” make the sign of the T, and say things like “Ford’s in his flivver, all’s right with the world.”
Thirty-four replies and no mention of Ernest And The Machine God by Harlan Ellison?
True, s/he doesn’t actually make an appearance; but s/he’s the source of Ernest’s aptitude with machines.
But there is a Robot Jesus (as well as Robot Jews).
I’ve said for a long time, that the series would make a great group of movies.
The Utwig race from Star Control worship a machine called the Ultron.