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They patented many devices, and by the mid-1970s, they had worked out all
kinds of practical robots. The trouble was that they needed computers that
were compact and cheap--but once the microchip came in, they had it. From that
moment on, Unimation became the foremost robot firm in the world and
Engelberger grew rich beyond anything he
could have dreamed of.
He has always been kind enough to give me much of the credit. I have met other
roboticists such as Marvin
Minsky and Shimon Y. Nof, who also admitted, cheerfully, the value of their
early reading of my robot stories. Nof, who is an Israeli, had first read
I, Robot in a Hebrew translation.
The roboticists take the Three Laws of Robotics seriously and they keep them
as an ideal for robot safety.
As yet, the types of industrial robots in use are so simple, essentially, that
safety devices have to be built in externally. However, robots may confidently
be expected to grow more versatile and capable and the Three Laws, or their
equivalent, will surely be built into their programming eventually.
I myself have never actually worked with robots, never even as much as seen
one, but I have never stopped thinking about them. I have to date written at
least thirty-five short stories and five novels that involve robots, and I
dare say that if I am spared, I will write more.
My robot stories and novels seem to have become classics in their own right
and, with the advent of the
Robot City series of novels, have become the wider literary universe of
other writers as well. Under those circumstances, it might be useful to go
over my robot stories and describe some of those which I think are
particularly significant and to explain why I think they are.
1. Robbie:
This is the first robot story I wrote. I turned it out between May 10 and May
22 of 1939, when I was nineteen years old and was just about to graduate from
college. I had a little trouble placing it, for John Campbell rejected it and
so did
Amazing Stories.
However, Fred Pohl accepted it on March 25,1940, and it appeared in the
September 1940 issue of
Super Science Stories, which he edited. Fred Pohl, being Fred Pohl, changed
the title to
Strange Playfellow, but I changed it back when I included it in my book
I, Robot and it has appeared as Robbie
in every subsequent incarnation.
Aside from being my first robot story, Robbie is significant because in it,
George Weston says to his wife in defense of a robot that is fulfilling the
role of nursemaid, He just can t help being faithful and loving and kind.
He s a machine
--made so.
This is the first indication, in my first story, of what eventually became
the First Law of
Robotics, and of the basic fact that robots were made with built--in safety
rules.
2. Reason:
Robbie would have meant nothing in itself if I had written no more robot
stories, particularly since it appeared in one of the minor magazines.
However, I wrote a second robot story, Reason, and that one John
Campbell liked. After a bit of revision, it appeared in the April 1941 issue
of
Astounding Science Fiction, and there it attracted notice. Readers became
aware that there were such things as positronic robots, and so did Campbell.
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That made everything afterward possible.
3. Liar!:
In the very next issue of
Astounding, that of May 1941, my third robot story, Liar! appeared. The
importance of this story was that it introduced Susan Calvin, who became the
central character in my early robot stories. This story was originally rather
clumsily done, largely because it dealt with the relationship between the
sexes at a time when I had not yet had my first date with a young lady.
Fortunately, I m a quick learner, and it is one story in which I made
significant changes before allowing it to appear in
I, Robot.
4. Runaround:
The next important robot story appeared in the March 1942 issue of
Astounding.
It was the first story in which I listed the Three Laws of Robotics explicitly
instead of making them implicit. In it, I have one character, Gregory Powell,
say to another, Michael Donovan: Now, look, let s start with the Three
Fundamental
Rules of Robotics--the three rules that are built most deeply into a robot s
positronic brain. He then recites them.
Later on, I called them the Laws of Robotics, and their importance to me was
threefold:
a)
They guided me in forming my plots and made it possible to write many short
stories, as well as several novels, based on robots. In these, I constantly
studied the consequences of the Three Laws.
b)
It was by all odds my most famous literary invention, quoted in season and out
by others. If all I have written is someday to be forgotten, the Three Laws of
Robotics will surely be the last to go.
c)
The passage in Runaround quoted above happens to be the very first time the
word robotics was used in print in the English language. I am therefore
credited, as I have said, with the invention of that word (as well as of
robotic, positronic, and psychohistory ) by the
Oxford English Dictionary, which takes the trouble--and the space--to quote
the Three Laws. (All these things were created by my twenty-second birthday
and I seem to have
created nothing since, which gives rise to grievous thoughts within me.)
5. Evidence:
This was the one and only story I wrote while I spent eight months and
twenty-six days in the Army.
At one point I persuaded a kindly librarian to let me remain in the locked
library over lunch so that I could work on the story. It is the first story in
which I made use of a humanoid robot. Stephen Byerley, the humanoid robot in
question (though in the story I don t make it absolutely clear whether he is a
robot or not), represents my first approach toward R. Daneel Olivaw, the
humaniform robot who appears in a number of my novels. Evidence
appeared in the September 1946 issue of
Astounding Science Fiction.
6. Little Lost Robot:
My robots tend to be benign entities. In fact, as the stories progressed, they
gradually gained in moral and ethical qualities until they far surpassed human
beings and, in the case of Daneel, approached the godlike. Nevertheless, I had
no intention of limiting myself to robots as saviors. I followed wherever the
wild winds of my imagination led me, and I was quite capable of seeing the
uncomfortable sides of the robot phenomena.
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It was only a few weeks ago (as I write this) that I received a letter from a
reader who scolded me because, in a robot story of mine that had just been
published, I showed the dangerous side of robots. He accused me of a failure
of nerve.
That he was wrong is shown by Little Lost Robot in which a robot is the
villain, even though it appeared nearly half a century ago. The seamy side of
robots is not the result of a failure in nerve that comes of my advancing age
and decrepitude. It has been a constant concern of mine all through my career.
7. The Evitable Conflict:
This was a sequel to Evidence and appeared in the June 1950 issue of
Astounding.
It was the first story I wrote that dealt primarily with computers (I called
them Machines in the story) rather than with robots per se. The difference
is not a great one. You might define a robot as a computerized machine or as
a
mobile computer. You might consider a computer as an immobile robot. In
any case, I clearly did not distinguish between the two, and although the
Machines, which don t make an actual physical appearance in the story, are
clearly computers, I included the story, without hesitation, in my robot
collection, 1.
Robot, and neither the publisher nor the readers objected. To be sure, Stephen
Byerley is in the story, but the question of his roboticity plays no role.
8. Franchise:
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