In the golden age of radio, X Minus One (NBC, December 21, 1955) delivered a 29-minute gut-punch adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s 1949 short story “Marionettes, Inc.” Public-domain and free this episode is no quaint relic. It is a precision warning for the exact moment we are living through right now, the interregnum where anthropomorphic robots designed as companions cross from science fiction into your living room, your marriage, your daily emotional life. Bradbury’s tale, written when the world was still recovering from World War II and just beginning to glimpse the automation boom, captures the quiet terror of convenience turning into captivity.

Today, as Tesla Optimus, Figure 03, 1X NEO, and Realbotix models move from factory pilots into beta homes, the story reads less like prophecy and more like a user manual for the decade ahea ...