If there is one man in the world who, circa 1989 was authorized to speak about robots in science fiction, that man was Isaac Asimov. After all, he created the Three Laws of Robotics and he wrote dozens of robot stories and even a few novels (which, say it softly, I actually enjoyed more than his Foundation series).
So when a book with his name and input in it comes out… and it’s a book or robot short stories, I tend to sit up and take notice.
Unlike the volume about Aliens I recently wrote about, this one doesn’t limit itself to pulling stories from the pages of Asmiov’s magazine, but actually looks across the breadth and depth of the entire SF spectrum. So you have tales as old as 1940 and as new as 1985.
I know many people attack the Golden Age of Science Fiction. And although most of these criticisms are based on silly little political agendas that have nothing to do with the artistry of the work in question, there are a few criticisms that I find valid, although whether that makes the work bad or good is purely a matter of taste.
It’s definitely true that SF stories from the 40s and 50s are simpler, and the “good” and “bad” options are often extremely clear (although this is a generalization). For some people, this oversimplification of morals seems less than literary (I will ignore, of course, those critics who attack the era’s definitions of good and evil themselves; people with zero sense of context have no business criticizing literature), and that is a valid concern. I find the simplicity of the morality of the stories comforting. It’s not how I’d write today, perhaps… but it feels good to know exactly what we should be rooting for in the context of the text.
Of course, the above misses the point, because these stories weren’t as much about exploring moral ambiguities as they were about highlighting the major issues–social and moral–that we would be facing due to changing times. They weren’t as nuanced as SF is today, but that’s because we have their shoulders to stand on: these men and women created the tropes, shorthand, assumptions and rules we use today.
The stories themselves range from the iconic (“Farewell to the Master“, the story that inspired The Day the Earth Stood Still) to the annoying (“Brother Robot“) to the extremely dark (and what did you expect when you include a tale by Philip K. Dick?).
My favorite was the opening story, “The Tunnel Under the World”, by Frederick Pohl, a tale that plays with suburban and existential anxieties from the 1950s… and subverts them beautifully with a truly magnificent ending.
This series of books are really good… but for evident reasons a volume about robots in which Asimov was involved is particularly important.
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a high concept science fiction novel entitled–perhaps controversially–Fat Man. He hopes readers enjoy the book as much as he loved writing it… but mainly, he hopes it makes them think. You can check it out here.
Classically Educated 