What is interesting to me is that when I was 12 or 15 I tried to pick up some Asimov because that was what my older brother was reading at the time, and discovered it to be a difficult book to read, understand, or even want to continue with. So, at that time I deemed Asimov to be off my reading lists and have never really thought about picking him up again. That is, until I saw the previews for a movie starring Will Smith.

Basically, without seeing the movie, I understand the plot to be that robots have become an integral part of human society. They take care of our children, they walk the dog, clean the dishes, do all of the dirty work that we don’t want to do ourselves and are tired of hiring illegal aliens to do, illegally, and so robots – which look a lot like humans, are now the central force behind many of the jobs that are to disgusting or to dangerous for humans to do. The problem is that robots are becoming self-aware and are not happy with this scenario; they rebel, and in the end a lot of robots are destroyed and I am sure that Will Smith is considered a hero.

Now, that would make for an interesting book in my opinion, but having tried to read Asimov years ago and having a wicked long memory, I didn’t recall his writing style leaning in that direction. Instead, I recall it being … different. Weirder somehow. Not what the movie was portraying.

In truth, I was right. The book delves into the theoretical possibilities of creating a self-aware robot (personally I don’t believe that to be possible) that begins to believe that it is superior to human-kind. However, at the same time that the robots are becoming more complex and more self-aware, they are rules by three laws. A robot cannot through action or inaction cause injury or death to a human, robots must obey orders given to it by a human, and they cannot intentionally harm or inure themselves unless there is a conflict with the first two rules. Therefore, built into the robotic matrix, is a failsafe against the type of movie that Twentieth Century Fox produced in that Robots cannot harm a human or through inaction cause a human to come to harm.

The book is a little different. Okay, the book is completely different. Basically, Asimov’s I, Robot is a history of the U.S. Robotics Company and all of the robots they’ve created through the years. It follows, loosely, the narrative accounts of the first robo-psychologist and the experiences she has had with robots from the first speaking robot all the way to the robot that was credited with inventing faster than light travel through space. She talks about the nuances of each robot and in the end the solution for the robots isn’t that they perform as humans would expect, but rather as their duties require. At one point, there is a tale of robot who, after observing all of the workings of a deep space energy station, creates a religion, declares himself a prophet, and locks up the humans so they cannot meddle with the operation and function of the station. The humans are worried that they are either going to die or they are going to lose their jobs when in the end the robots functioned better than expected. Their solution to the perceived problem was to send all new robots out to be converted to this new religion before shipping them off to their assigned space stations.

In the end, there was only one real piece of actual conflict in the entire book, conflict that could’ve resulted in a human death – and it was caused by human and government fallacy. As I have watched the previews of for the movie, I’ve seen a similar scene play out, but in truth, causing harm or death to a human through action or inaction was still the protecting principle and knowing this, even with an altered set of the three rules of robotics, there was never any real possibility for harm.

This is a good book. It is along the lines, in my opinion, of the speculative fiction that was prevalent when this was published. Ayn Rand, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and others all wrote in a vein that this seems to fall into. And on top of that, it is entirely worth reading.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/08/i-robot-by-isaac-asimov/feed/ 0