Earlier this year, I posted about how Hanson Robotics' amazing Philip K. Dick robot, an android version of the late SF author, went missing. Well, according to this New York Times story from today, PKD is still MIA. Unless this is a publicity stunt, the loss of the robot is a major bummer, especially on the eve of the July 7 release of the film A Scanner Darkly, based on his excellent novel. Apparently, David Hanson accidentally left the head, packed in an American Tourister suitcase, on an airplane when head to change planes on the way from Dallas to San Francisco. From the NYT:
After landing in San Francisco, he notified the airline, whose officials apparently found the head in Las Vegas, packed it in a box and sent it on the next flight to San Francisco. Mysteriously, it never arrived."It's hard to know where they went wrong," said Mr. Hanson. "Did it go on to another city? Did it get mistagged? Did it end up in a warehouse? What happened?" He still doesn't know, though he is in touch with America West every few weeks in a vain quest for answers…
For Mr. Hanson the missing android is an open sore, straining his relations with Mr. Dick's foundation and the author's two surviving daughters, who provided access to much of Mr. Dick's nonpublished materials, which were downloaded into the android's brain. Sorry, database.
It took Mr. Hanson and a team of other experts six months to build the robot, and required $25,000 from student loans and investors. He also regards it as an artist might a masterpiece, one of a kind and invaluable in its own right.
