![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Rest of the Robots
Mar. 1st, 2010 11:47 pmI've just re-read Asimov's 'The Rest of the Robots'. I don't actually remember reading it the first time, it's only that every time I started a new story, I realised a page or two in that I'd read it before. I persisted, though, because they are pretty entertaining, Asimov's hard-on for Susan Calvin notwithstanding (oh man, that is such a topic -- but for another time). Anyway, this time around I have Some Thoughts.
For one thing, I never noticed before just how very very dated these stories are. It's not just that the people in them are the people of Asimov's time, transported to random future-times that seem absurd now that we've had 50 years of social change in between. He also (inadvertantly) draws attention to that fact in his introduction -- which is essentially an essay about what he calls 'the Frankenstein complex', in which he states his intention that his robot stories would be different to those of his predecessors. Instead of a fist-shaking 'what hath man wrought??' ethos of Man's Abominable Creations Run Amok, his would be logical, useful machines that only ever harmed anything through human or mechanical error.
He ties it back to Faust, of course, and the ancient human obsession with the Dangers of Forbidden Knowledge, a criticism with which I very much agree. However, the ordinary folk in the stories still react to the robots as though they were rampaging Frankenstein's Monsters. I get that Asimov was most likely trying to make a point by showing such reactions (though of course it is also the point of dramatic tension on which several of the stories turn), but having every lay-person in every story react with the same comical, mindless terror upon encountering a robot just drives home the inevitable observation that these are not modern people. We've had 50 years of development. We've grown into our technology slowly. We don't have positronic brains just yet, but if and when we do develop Asimov-style robots, they are not going to be terrifying except to a Luddite few, and even then the repugnance is more likely to be based in hatred and an abstract Fear for Humanity than in animal fear.
Some of the dated-ness is more humourous, of course. The final story in the book, "Galley Slave" was written in 1957 while the author was in the midst of proof-reading a biochemistry textbook. It features a proof-reading robot. "Congratulations," says any modern reader, "you've invented spell-check." Although of course, the robot is much more attuned to the nuances of language than MS Word, and never makes mistakes. There is, however, a minor typographical error within the story.
Finally, on the subject of printer's errors, the back of the book is the most hilarious of all. It is a 1976 reprint of a 1968 edition, and I guess Asimov was pretty justified in his writing of the human characters for decades after their initial publication, because Panther describes it as "Isaac Asimov's final, classic, terrifying picture of robotic developments in the future -- here in paperback for the first time." Emphasis mine.
For one thing, I never noticed before just how very very dated these stories are. It's not just that the people in them are the people of Asimov's time, transported to random future-times that seem absurd now that we've had 50 years of social change in between. He also (inadvertantly) draws attention to that fact in his introduction -- which is essentially an essay about what he calls 'the Frankenstein complex', in which he states his intention that his robot stories would be different to those of his predecessors. Instead of a fist-shaking 'what hath man wrought??' ethos of Man's Abominable Creations Run Amok, his would be logical, useful machines that only ever harmed anything through human or mechanical error.
He ties it back to Faust, of course, and the ancient human obsession with the Dangers of Forbidden Knowledge, a criticism with which I very much agree. However, the ordinary folk in the stories still react to the robots as though they were rampaging Frankenstein's Monsters. I get that Asimov was most likely trying to make a point by showing such reactions (though of course it is also the point of dramatic tension on which several of the stories turn), but having every lay-person in every story react with the same comical, mindless terror upon encountering a robot just drives home the inevitable observation that these are not modern people. We've had 50 years of development. We've grown into our technology slowly. We don't have positronic brains just yet, but if and when we do develop Asimov-style robots, they are not going to be terrifying except to a Luddite few, and even then the repugnance is more likely to be based in hatred and an abstract Fear for Humanity than in animal fear.
Some of the dated-ness is more humourous, of course. The final story in the book, "Galley Slave" was written in 1957 while the author was in the midst of proof-reading a biochemistry textbook. It features a proof-reading robot. "Congratulations," says any modern reader, "you've invented spell-check." Although of course, the robot is much more attuned to the nuances of language than MS Word, and never makes mistakes. There is, however, a minor typographical error within the story.
Finally, on the subject of printer's errors, the back of the book is the most hilarious of all. It is a 1976 reprint of a 1968 edition, and I guess Asimov was pretty justified in his writing of the human characters for decades after their initial publication, because Panther describes it as "Isaac Asimov's final, classic, terrifying picture of robotic developments in the future -- here in paperback for the first time." Emphasis mine.
