20 Of The Coolest Female Robots In Science Fiction

Screenshot from Metropolis (Image via UFA GmbH)

Female robots are far more interesting than sexist science fiction tropes would have you believe. Here are 20 we love the best.

Robots have held a certain fascination ever since they were first introduced as a concept in the 1920 play R.U.R., by Karel Čapek (Karel’s brother Josef actually came up with the word). At the time, robots were little more than automata made for amusement and, very occasionally, practical purposes. It wasn’t until 1928 that humanity would see one of the first humanoid robots at the Model Engineers Society exhibition in London.

Earlier literary references to humanoid robots abound, however. In Homer’s Iliad, the god Hephaestus creates armor for Achilles with the help of female robots: “Golden maidservants hastened to help their master. They looked like real women and could not only speak and use their limbs but were endowed with intelligence and trained in handwork by the immortal gods” (Rieu translation).

Robots in popular culture have been both an object of fascination and horror. How wondrous, that humans could create such advanced creatures, could even create a kind of life. But, then, how terrible it is to create something that could surpass you. Many science fiction works waver between the two extremes. Isaac Asimov was especially fond of robots and explored the consequences of their creations and nascent consciousness in I, Robot. Far more creators seem interested in the frightening side of robots; see Battlestar Galactica, with its menacing Cylons, or Doctor Who’s Daleks.

Female robots have been especially problematic.

Since its earliest days, science fiction has been fairly obsessed with the concept. When a robot is specifically coded as female (strange that mechanical beings require gender, but that’s another discussion for another time), “she” is often sexualized. Conveniently, she is also often young, obliging, and white. Too often, a female android is simply grounds for a misogynistic fantasy, a sexual being without a soul or personality.

It’s a wasted opportunity, really. It would be far more satisfying to use feminine automata to examine cultural preconceptions about gender, intelligence, and race. To be fair, a number of the robots included on this list are a little more complex than your standard sci-fi fembot trope. And even where their stories aren’t quite in line with what we might want to see, there’s at least a kernel of something interesting happening.

Oh, and one more thing before we dive in. There are spoilers for some of the movies discussed. In fact, merely mentioning a certain character in relation to robots may be enough to spoil some twists, so proceed with caution.