At Robbie’s gestured urging (he cannot speak), she begins to tell him his favorite story, Cinderella, but her mother, Grace, calls them to come inside. Gloria is a demanding but charming girl who loves Robbie. Robbie the Robot plays hide-and-go-seek outdoors with his charge, nine-year-old Gloria Weston.
Against these anti-robot arguments she holds the memory of an early robot model named Robbie, which was sold in 1996 as a nursemaid for a little girl. Accused of being emotionless like a robot, Calvin argues that robots are more than mechanical parts, “They’re a cleaner better breed than we are.” Calvin reminisces about early opposition to robots from labor unions (that were worried about competition) and religious groups (that were worried about sacrilege). An unnamed reporter for “Interplanetary Press” prepares to interview Susan Calvin, a seventy-five-year-old “Robopsychologist” who works for U.S. (The publisher prevailed with I, ROBOT.) The collection has enjoyed great success through the years and is offered by Spectra in a compact, affordable, and eminently readable edition for you–or your robot. In 1949, Asimov gathered the stories into a book that he wanted to call Mind and Iron. But throughout the 1940s the subsequent tales appeared regularly in pulp science fiction magazines. I, ROBOT hints loudly that robots are a “better breed” than humans and though they were created to serve, they will inevitably become the masters.Īt first Asimov had trouble getting “Robbie,” the opening story in I, ROBOT, published.
Conceived by Asimov as the Three Laws of Robotics–essential laws built into the robots’ inner workings–these Laws freed science fiction writers to develop robots as characters instead of portraying them as monstrous things. The stories grew from Asimov’s opinion that anyone smart enough to create robots would be smart enough to make sure that those robots wouldn’t attack their makers. In the process the book reveals Asimov’s overarching vision of a future that entangles inextricably the humans and the machines. Beginning with a simple story about the relationship between a little girl and a limited-function robot, I Robot moves on to explore, in subsequent stories, increasingly sophisticated thoughts, questions, and moral complexities.
Rather than telling the typical tale of a humanoid machine run amok (e.g., Terminator), SFWA Grand Master Isaac Asimov asks readers to imagine a world where robots protect us from our own worst nature. I, ROBOT turns the world of science fiction literature on its head.
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