Story where human children are raised by robots because there were no adult humans

Question

I read a number of books by the same author about human children raised by androids or human like robots because there were no adult humans

Edit - The androids acted like they were the actual parents of the children until some flaw/accident exposed them as not really humans. In one I think the parent fell off a building to reveal electronics but take it with a grain of salt. Then the truth was revealed to the group of kids, that they were the only real human beings and the androids were trying their best to replicate a normal human upbringing.

I got them from the local library late 60's early 70's. As I recall they were towards the end of the alphabet as I can visualize getting them out of the back wall of the library which would be P's on to Z's if that helps!

Answer 1

What you describe has some things in common with a 1971 novel by Edmund Cooper called The Overman Culture.

I suggested this book as the answer to another question here, and that answer gives more details about the book.

The main difference between The Overman Culture and what you remember was that it was only one book, not a series. Also the author's surname begins with "C", not late in the alphabet as you remember.

However it does feature human children being raised by androids who look like humans. It also features a human-seeming android being revealed to be a machine after a fall, but the android in question resembled a child not an adult. Eventually Michael Faraday, the young protagonist, realises that only those of his classmates who bleed are real humans - the rest of the children and all the adults in his life including his parents and teachers are androids. By the way, the children all have the names of major historical figures.

The environment in which the children were raised was not entirely a replication of a normal human upbringing. Anachronisms were deliberately introduced into the London setting, such as Queen Victoria co-existing with Messerschmitt fighters, in order to make the human children grow up to be questioning and curious. They were meant to realise that they were living in a reconstructed version of London, not the London of the history books.

Answer 2

I stumbled on this thread looking for a book where kids were raised by robots but the remembered line "Everything is for man" led me to it. I read that back in the seventies but something must have stuck for me to remember that - It was Kuldesak by Richard Cowper.

Earth, 2000 years after the final holocaust which drove man deep underground; a ghostly, deserted planet peopled only by the diligent robots who, century after century, silently harvest grain which no man will eat.

Up into this eerie world comes Mel, a questioning young Roamer who has disobeyed the Law which says he must never venture into or beyond the Lost Levels. Together with three companions, and a companion not of this Earth, Mel takes on the awesome task of freeing human beings from the tyranny imposed on them by their remote ancestors; of justifying the agonized cry of Barney as he died in a Forbidden Level: "I am a man! Everything is for man!"

Answer 3

Im also looking for a book like that, hoping we're looking for the same one. I remember from what I read, they also had neighbors that they were close friends with, where the robot kids would "grow up" with the normal kids by basically having parts switched out, and they all ran away together so the robot kids wouldn't get "retired", basically destroyed, because robot kids can't grow up. I remember it ending on a cliffhanger, where they were caught after running away.

I just remembered, so in the beginning of the book, the parents had a divorce, and that was the catalyst of the whole thing. The mom married a new person, and the kids didn't like their step-siblings because they weren't allowed in their rooms, ect. Their rooms were always locked because they were robots.

Ok, the one I remember is "under their skin" by Margaret Haddix, hope its the same one you were looking for