BBC News ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The seeds of the film were sown by celebrated British science fiction writer Brian Aldiss in 1969 when he penned a futuristic tale of a child android given the capacity to love. The short story Super Toys Last All Summer Long set in motion a chain of events that lasted more than three decades and if the final result is considerably different from the origin of the species then one must consider the journey the original idea has taken. "I wrote that story in 1969 when computers were not the household toys, pleasures and working tools they are now - they were lodged in laboratories," explains Aldiss from his Oxford home. "If that was the case, it was quite easy to imagine that one might create an android boy and program him to believe (a) that he was a real boy, and (b) he loved his mother. "The gist of the story is that however the boy android David tried to please his mother, he could never do it - the essence of the story is about love and the failure of love.