The literary role of artificial life has evolved over time: early myths present animated objects as instruments of divine will, later stories treat their attempted creation as a blasphemy with inevitable consequences, and modern tales range from apocalyptic warnings against blind technological progress to explorations of the ethical questions raised by the possibility of sentient machines.
The earliest examples were all presented as the results of divine intervention and include: The dry bones that came to life in the Book of Ezekiel (Chapter 37); three-legged self-navigating tables created by the god Hephaestus (Iliad xviii); and the statue Galatea, brought to life by the prayers of her creator Pygmalion.
In Lyman Frank Baum's children's novel Ozma of Oz, the first-ever introduction of a humanoid-appearance mechanical man that would satisfy the later "humanoid robot" definition occurred in 1907 - some fifteen years before the word "robot" was coined - with Tik-Tok, powered with a trio of clockwork movements for his thinking, movement and speech, none of which he could wind up himself.
R. U. R. and its Robots reflect contemporary anxieties about dehumanization amid the mass industrialization and militarism of the early twentieth century.
In an article in the Czech Lidové noviny in 1933 he also explains that he originally wanted to call the creatures "laboři" from the Latin word labor.