Read Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition) Online
Authors: James Gunn
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition) (11 page)
1982Susan Calvin is born. The same year Lawrence Robertson founds USR.1996"Robbie" is constructed as a non-speaking robot and sold to the
Weston family as a nursemaid for Gloria.1998"Robbie" ("Strange Playfellow"),
Super Science Stories,
September
1940. New York passes curfew law for robots.2002Dr. Alfred Lanning demonstrates a mobile, speaking robot (intended
for the mines of Mercury) in a psychomath seminar. Susan Calvin
is present.2003Calvin earns bachelor's degree.2003-2007Use of robots is banned on Earth because of opposition by
labor unions and fundamentalist religious groups.2007Calvin earns her Ph.D. and joins USR as "the first great practitioner
of a new art," robopsychology. Lanning is director of research. USR
has hit a financial low point and is forced to turn to the extraterrestrial
market. Robots are about twelve feet tall, clumsy, and not
much good.
1. Some confusion in dates remains: the Introduction says that Susan Calvin joined USR in 2008; she says, in the lead-in to "Runaround," that it was 2007. "Runaround" also refers to
fifty
-year-old antique mounts (robots).
fifty
-year-old antique mounts (robots).
Circa 2007 The First Mercury Expedition. Robots try to help build the
mining station there, but the effort fails.Teens and Twenties Gregory Powell and Michael Donovan handle most
of the difficult robotics cases.2015"Runaround,"
Astounding,
March 1942. The Second Mercury Expedition.
USR has developed a new type of robot, SPD-13 ("Speedy").2015 1/2"Reason,"
Astounding,
April 1941. USR has developed a new kind
of robot, QT-1 ("Cutie"), to direct energy beams from Sun to Earth
from solar stations.2016"Catch That Rabbit,"
Astounding,
February 1944. USR has developed
a master robot, DV-5 ("Davie"), which controls six sub-robots, for
asteroid mining.2021"Liar!,"
Astounding,
May 1941. USR creates a robot, RB-34 ("Herbie"),
which has the accidental ability to read minds.2029"Little Lost Robot,"
Astounding,
March 1947. Work is progressing (in a station situated in the asteroid belt) on a hyperatomic drive for
interstellar travel. USR creates an experimental group of robots, NS-2
("Nestors"), some of which are not impressioned with the entire
First Law of Robotics so that they can work with scientists who are
involved in dangerous research.2029 or 2030"Escape" ("Paradoxical Escape"),
Astounding,
August 1945.
"The Brain," a larger positronic robot brain installed as a computer,
makes possible interstellar travel by suppressing its anxiety about
the temporary death of human passengers in the "hyperspace"
Jump.2032"Evidence,"
Astounding,
September 1946. Humanoid robots are possible and may have been constructed.2052"The Evitable Conflict,"
Astounding,
June 1950. The world is unified
under a "World Coordinator," and the world's economy is entirely
under the control of giant computers called "The Machines."2064Susan Calvin dies.
Little more information than that sketched above is provided about the world in which
I, Robot
exists because little more is necessary for the understanding of the basic narrative. That narrative is about robots and the problems people have with them in spite of the precautions engineers have taken in constructing them. The most important precaution, and probably the single most important contribution to the success of the robot stories, is the Three Laws of Robotics.
2
I, Robot
exists because little more is necessary for the understanding of the basic narrative. That narrative is about robots and the problems people have with them in spite of the precautions engineers have taken in constructing them. The most important precaution, and probably the single most important contribution to the success of the robot stories, is the Three Laws of Robotics.
2
2. The word "robotics" was invented by Asimov although he didn't realize it at the time. He said that if he was to be remembered at all in future years it would be for the Three Laws of Robotics.
Asimov was not the first to write about robots. As he pointed out in
The Rest of the Robots,
Homer, in
The Iliad,
described Hephaestus being served by maidens he had created from gold as mechanical, thinking
creatures. There were other robot predecessors: Talos, the bull-headed man made of bronze, who guarded Crete for King Minos; a Golem molded of clay by various medieval rabbis
3
and animated by a "shem" or name of God; Roger Bacon's talking brazen head; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein's monster (1818); and Karel Capek's robots in his 1921 play
R.U.R.
(Rossum's Universal Robots), which introduced the Czech word for forced worker or slave, "robot," into the language. But every robot up to Asimov's time, virtually without exception, turned against its creator, and it was this tradition against which Asimov was rebelling.
The Rest of the Robots,
Homer, in
The Iliad,
described Hephaestus being served by maidens he had created from gold as mechanical, thinking
creatures. There were other robot predecessors: Talos, the bull-headed man made of bronze, who guarded Crete for King Minos; a Golem molded of clay by various medieval rabbis
3
and animated by a "shem" or name of God; Roger Bacon's talking brazen head; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein's monster (1818); and Karel Capek's robots in his 1921 play
R.U.R.
(Rossum's Universal Robots), which introduced the Czech word for forced worker or slave, "robot," into the language. But every robot up to Asimov's time, virtually without exception, turned against its creator, and it was this tradition against which Asimov was rebelling.
3. In 1970 Professor Marvin Minksy (in "The Bicentennial Man" there is a robopsychologist named Merton Mansky) of the M.I.T. project on artificial intelligence spoke at the SFWA Nebula Award banquet about his work and the help that writers such as Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke had provided in laying out the chain of development from the Golem to the provision of teleological goals. Asimov got up and responded that the thought that had been running through his mind was, "What kind of goals would a Golem have if a Golem could have goals?"
The trend had begun to turn, however, even before Asimov's first robot story. Lester del Rey's "Helen O'Loy," published in
Astounding
in December 1938, described a robot created as so much like a person that she falls in love and eventually makes an ideal wife for her creator. Binder's robot, Adam Link, was a noble creature moved by a strong sense of honor and love. His brain was constructed of "iridium sponge," those of Asimov's robots, "a spongy globe of platinumiridium." And Binder's Adam Link stories a total of ten of them continued to appear in
Amazing
throughout 1939, 1940, 1941, and 1942 (seven of them were collected in
Adam Link Robot,
published by Paperback Library in 1965). In "Adam Link's Vengeance," published in February 1940, the robot thinks, ''A robot must never kill a human of his own free will."
Astounding
in December 1938, described a robot created as so much like a person that she falls in love and eventually makes an ideal wife for her creator. Binder's robot, Adam Link, was a noble creature moved by a strong sense of honor and love. His brain was constructed of "iridium sponge," those of Asimov's robots, "a spongy globe of platinumiridium." And Binder's Adam Link stories a total of ten of them continued to appear in
Amazing
throughout 1939, 1940, 1941, and 1942 (seven of them were collected in
Adam Link Robot,
published by Paperback Library in 1965). In "Adam Link's Vengeance," published in February 1940, the robot thinks, ''A robot must never kill a human of his own free will."
No doubt there are other robot predecessors and even other stories in which resemblances to
I, Robot
are clear. The purpose in citing them, however, is not to detract from Asimov's accomplishments but to point out debts that he himself was quick to acknowledge (though he might not have realized the full extent of them; a magnificent memory may not always be an asset, and Asimov occasionally discovered, to his horror in the case of "Green Patches," that he was reworking someone else's idea). When Asimov showed "Robbie" to his friend and fellow Futurian, Frederik Pohl, the 20-year-old Pohl, already working as a part-time agent and full-time editor and writer, told him (correctly) that Campbell would reject it because it was too reminiscent of "Helen O'Loy."
Amazing
rejected it as well because it was too similar to "I, Robot,"
which they had published just six months before (and the editor must have had Binder's "The Trial of Adam Link" already in type for the July issue). Pohl himself published "Robbie" in
Super Science Stories.
I, Robot
are clear. The purpose in citing them, however, is not to detract from Asimov's accomplishments but to point out debts that he himself was quick to acknowledge (though he might not have realized the full extent of them; a magnificent memory may not always be an asset, and Asimov occasionally discovered, to his horror in the case of "Green Patches," that he was reworking someone else's idea). When Asimov showed "Robbie" to his friend and fellow Futurian, Frederik Pohl, the 20-year-old Pohl, already working as a part-time agent and full-time editor and writer, told him (correctly) that Campbell would reject it because it was too reminiscent of "Helen O'Loy."
Amazing
rejected it as well because it was too similar to "I, Robot,"
which they had published just six months before (and the editor must have had Binder's "The Trial of Adam Link" already in type for the July issue). Pohl himself published "Robbie" in
Super Science Stories.
"Robbie" set up many of the conflicts that later pervaded
I, Robot
and even the entire series of robot stories. In the story, the Westons have bought Robbie as a nursemaid for their daughter Gloria because, as her mother says, "It was a novelty; it took a load off me, and and it was a fashionable thing to do." Two years later, however, Mrs. Weston wanted to sell the robot back to the company. "She [Gloria] won't play with anyone else"; "I won't have my daughter entrusted to a machine and I don't care how clever it is. It has no soul, and no one knows what it may be thinking. A child just isn't made to be guarded by a thing of metal''; "and . . . something might go wrong. . . . Some little jigger will come loose and the awful thing will go berserk. . . ." George Weston protests: "A robot is infinitely more to be trusted than a human nursemaid. . . . Robbie was constructed for only one purpose really to be the companion of a little child. His entire `mentality' has been created for the purpose. He just can't help being faithful and loving and kind. He's a machine
made so.
That's more than you can say for humans." Nevertheless, George surrenders to his wife's persistence, only to reunite the inconsolable Gloria with Robbie at the end.
I, Robot
and even the entire series of robot stories. In the story, the Westons have bought Robbie as a nursemaid for their daughter Gloria because, as her mother says, "It was a novelty; it took a load off me, and and it was a fashionable thing to do." Two years later, however, Mrs. Weston wanted to sell the robot back to the company. "She [Gloria] won't play with anyone else"; "I won't have my daughter entrusted to a machine and I don't care how clever it is. It has no soul, and no one knows what it may be thinking. A child just isn't made to be guarded by a thing of metal''; "and . . . something might go wrong. . . . Some little jigger will come loose and the awful thing will go berserk. . . ." George Weston protests: "A robot is infinitely more to be trusted than a human nursemaid. . . . Robbie was constructed for only one purpose really to be the companion of a little child. His entire `mentality' has been created for the purpose. He just can't help being faithful and loving and kind. He's a machine
made so.
That's more than you can say for humans." Nevertheless, George surrenders to his wife's persistence, only to reunite the inconsolable Gloria with Robbie at the end.
Other problems besides unreasoning opposition to robots run through the robot series: 1) human resentment of robots (Asimov calls it "the Frankenstein complex") and the difficulties of introducing robots on Earth; 2) determining what is good for people; 3) the difficulties of giving a robot unambiguous instructions; 4) the distinctions among robots and between robots and people and the difficulties in telling robots and people apart; 5) the superiority of robots to people; and also 6) the superiority of people to robots.
Asimov rearranged the order of the stories when they were published in
I, Robot.
He also made some small editorial changes for consistency. "Reason," for instance, was placed third in the book although it was written and published second, before the codification of the Three Laws.
I, Robot.
He also made some small editorial changes for consistency. "Reason," for instance, was placed third in the book although it was written and published second, before the codification of the Three Laws.
Pleased by the appearance of "Strange Playfellow" ("Robbie") in print, Asimov decided to "press Campbell's buttons" by using a religious motif in a robot story. Campbell responded as Asimov had hoped, asking Asimov to write the story for him and buying it immediately. It was the first Asimov robot story to appear in
Astounding.
"Reason" incorporated two of Campbell's editorial preferences: a philosophic concern with religion Cutie deduces by "pure reason" that he could not have been constructed by such inferior beings as Donovan and
Powell but must have been created by the most powerful thing around, the energy convertor, which he therefore reasons to be a god and a pragmatic conclusion. When Cutie handles the energy beam perfectly, even through an "electron" storm, the two engineers decide to leave him with his delusion and even to ship other QT models to the station to be indoctrinated with the religious belief that works so well. "Liar!," the third robot story written by Asimov, incorporated the Three Laws of Robotics for the first time.
4
Campbell had suggested the Three Laws during a discussion that preceded the writing of the story, and Asimov codified them:
Astounding.
"Reason" incorporated two of Campbell's editorial preferences: a philosophic concern with religion Cutie deduces by "pure reason" that he could not have been constructed by such inferior beings as Donovan and
Powell but must have been created by the most powerful thing around, the energy convertor, which he therefore reasons to be a god and a pragmatic conclusion. When Cutie handles the energy beam perfectly, even through an "electron" storm, the two engineers decide to leave him with his delusion and even to ship other QT models to the station to be indoctrinated with the religious belief that works so well. "Liar!," the third robot story written by Asimov, incorporated the Three Laws of Robotics for the first time.
4
Campbell had suggested the Three Laws during a discussion that preceded the writing of the story, and Asimov codified them:
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