These stories use science fiction to explore the human condition. There are likely hundreds of such tales.
Off the top of my head:
TOS episode 1-7 - roboKirk, real Kirk, and a fembot (it’s complicated)
TOS episode 2-2 - an immortal alien falls for a Star Fleet officer
TOS episode 2-9 - an energy being falls for Zefram Cochrane
TOS episode 3-19 - Kirk falls for a fembot
Blade Runner (1982) - A cop falls for a replicant
Her (2013) - a lonely writer falls for an AI via cell phone
Helen O’Loy - engineer falls in love with robot he created (1939)
Letter to Ellen (Chan Davis) - artificial human falls in love with woman and must tell her of his nature
Alien: Romulus (2024)
Rain, an orphaned colonist on a brutally dystopic Weyland-Yutani mining colony, considers Andy her adopted brother. Andy is an android (“I prefer the term artificial person”) – previously discarded, then reprogrammed by Rain’s father to look out for her.
Andy turns out to be the key to Rain and a group of friends escaping from their miserable world—but androids are not allowed at their destination.
The story involves Rain’s reciprocal devotion to Andy versus her knowlege that he is an android, how he is treated as disposable by some of the other humans, and how far Rain’s feelings extend when her survival is at stake.
TWILIGHT ZONE (orig)
Forget the title, but a guy is imprisoned on an asteroid and a kind supply captain gifts him a femail android. They fall in love. He gets pardoned and has to leave her. The ending it sad as hell as her voice degrades calling out his name: “Corey, Coreyyy, cooooreeey.”
Brin’s Lungfish has humans acting as parents to androids - raising them to be good citizens, just as children are raised by good parents. A nice model for a transition between a world of all humans and a world with humans and androids
Ooo, great example! The episode is “The Lonely” – spoilerrific Wikipedia entry below.
It took me a split second to realize why the character name “James A. Corry” seemed so familiar… but there’s no connection to James S. A. Corey of The Expanse series.
There may be a subconscious connection in the writing.
There could be, but The Expanse authors have said the pen name James S. A. Corey comes from “…Abraham’s and Franck’s middle names, respectively, and S. A. are the initials of Abraham’s daughter.”
Boring! 