Pawel Hynek’s 2006 image “Obsolete” depicts a homeless robot begging for electrical power; it’s striking and funny as well as a little uncomfortable-making. It reminds me of one of the most demented scenes in science fiction history: the moment in Ian McDonald’s stupendous novel The Broken Land in which a re-animated severed head is reduced to performing sexual favors on a street-corner in exchange for nutrient bath to fill the shallow dish in which its neck-stump rests.