Isaac Asimov was the first author I remember loving. I devoured his books, from the sprawling Foundation trilogy (which turned into six books) to the I, Robot series and all the way down to his two science fiction magazines.

There wasn’t a defining moment when I realized that I had a thing for robots and science fiction – but as I look back, Asimov is probably a big reason. (So much so that I wrote a series of ‘short’ stories in high school, sprawling 40-page stories that crossed Piers Anthony and Asimov together to create an unintelligible world – that had robots who revolted against their human masters.)

I tell you all of this so that I can get to the larger point: robots are cool – and the folks over at ImpactLab.com have put together a list of the 50 most influential robots.

Of course, there is one robot that was left off the list: Maximillian, the giant, red robot that battled the V.I.N.C.E.N.T. in Disney’s 1979 classic, The Black Hole.