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Asimov's books
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- ". . . one of the stock plots of science fiction was that
of the invention of a robot--usually pictured as a creature of
metal without soul or emotion. Under the influence of the
well-known deeds and ultimate fate of
Frankenstein and
Rossum,
there seemed only one change to be rung on this plot.--Robots were
created and destroyed their creator; robots were created and
destroyed their creator: robots were created and destroyed their
creator-- In the 1930's I became a science-fiction reader and I
quickly grew tired of this dull hundred-times-told tale. As a
person interested in science, I resented the purely faustian
interpretation of science."
--Isaac Asimov from the introduction to The
Rest of the Robots
Isaac Asimov wanted to change the image of the robot--and he did.
Asimov wrote nearly 40 robot short stories, in addition to many
novels with robots as main characters. He felt robots were like any
other technology: they would have built-in safeguards and the only
danger would be their masters. In his first collection of robot short
stories, I, Robot, he presented the world with the influential
Three Laws of Robotics. Asimov's three
laws insured that his robots would not turn on their human masters,
and provided him with the seeds for many plots concerning the
intricate issues raised by the three laws:
- "There was just enough ambiguity in the Three Laws to
provide the conflicts and uncertainties required for new stories,
and, to my great relief, it seemed always to be possible to think
up a new angle out of the sixty-one words of the Three Laws."
(Isaac Asimov from Rest of the Robots)
Asimov's robots are the servants and guardians of humans, and are
in some ways better than their masters. The only evil that occurs in
Asimov's robot stories stems from the humans, and their misuse of
robots and perversion of the three laws.
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