Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition)

by James Gunn

  4. The mention of the First Law in "Robbie" and of the Three Laws in "Reason" clearly are interpolations for the 1950 book, as is the mention of Susan Calvin in "Robbie" and "Runaround."

  The Asimov robot stories as a whole may respond best to an analysis based on that ambiguity and on the ways in which Asimov played 40 variations upon a theme. The importance to the evolution of science fiction, at least in the period between 1940 and 1950, was that this was an intellectual development. The emotional response the fear of the machine, the fear of the creature turning on its creator was derided. In the robot stories, such responses are characteristic of foolish, unthinking people, religious fanatics, short-sighted labor unions. The Frankenstein complex may be observably true in human nature (and this, along with its appeal to human fears of change and the unknown, may explain its persistence in literature), but it is false to humanity's intellectual aspirations to be rational and to build rationally. Blind emotion, sentimentality, prejudice, faith in the impossible, unwillingness to accept observable truth, failure to use one's intellectual capacities or the resources for discovering the truth that are available, these were the evils that Campbell and Asimov saw as the sources of human misery. They could be dispelled, they thought, by exposure to ridicule and the clear, cool voice of reason, though always with difficulty and never completely.

  "Robbie," for instance, considers the question of unreasoning opposition to robots: Grace Weston's concern about Robbie, the villagers' fear of him, New York's curfew for robots. Mrs. Weston, who herself has an unreasoning determination to get rid of Robbie, says, "People aren't reasonable about these things." The climax of the story, in which Robbie moves swiftly to save Gloria from being run down by a tractor, makes clear the advantages of the robot's single-minded concern for its function and its instantaneous response to a crisis that paralyzes Gloria's parents for vital heartbeats.

  "Runaround" is an exercise in the conflict between two of the Three Laws. Speedy, a valuable new robot designed for use in the mines of Mercury, has been ordered to get selenium from a pool. But he is found circling the pool acting drunk, and it turns out that carbon monoxide released by volcanic activity in the area can combine with iron to form volatile iron carbonyl. At a certain distance from the pool Speedy's instinct for self-preservation (the Third Law) exactly balances the necessity to obey orders (the Second Law). Powell is able to break Speedy out of his deadly circle only by placing himself in danger so that Speedy must rescue him (the First Law).

  Many of the stories develop from unforeseen consequences of the creation of new robots (sometimes complicated by inaccurate or unspecific orders, as in "Runaround"); others come about through accident. Both stem naturally from Asimov's premise that unforeseen consequences or accidents are eventualities that rational persons cannot guard against.

  "Catch That Rabbit" concerns a master robot with six sub-robots who is created for asteroid mining but occasionally malfunctions when not watched and cannot remember why. It turns out that six sub-robots are too many for Davie to handle in an emergency. When Donovan and Powell discover this, partly by accident, they are able to pinpoint the affected part of Davie's positronic brain, the part that is stressed by a six-way order.

  "Liar!" begins with the accidental creation of a telepathic robot, Herbie. Herbie is asked to tell each of the characters what he has learned from reading other characters' minds, and because he cannot "harm" them, according to the First Law, he tells them what they want to hear. In particular, he tells plain, spinsterish Susan Calvin that the man she loves, Milton Ashe, is in love with her. When they all discover that Herbie has been lying to them, Susan drives Herbie insane by forcing on him the dilemma that no matter what he does he will be hurting someone.

  "Little Lost Robot" brings in a search for a hyperatomic (interstellar) drive at a base in the asteroids. A new kind of robot, the Nestor series, has been created to work with scientists in dangerous situations from which ordinary robots would pull the scientists to safety. Some Nestors have not been impressioned, therefore, with the entire First Law, and one of them is told (the Second Law) by an irritated scientist to get lost. The variation Asimov used here was the conditions under which the First Law would have to be relaxed, those conditions being when robots had to discriminate between dangers, and the possible problems this might involve. When the Nestor hides among identical robots and refuses to reveal itself, Susan Calvin attempts to force it into the open by placing a man in danger. At first, all the robots spring to save the man. In a second, slightly different experiment, they all remain seated, having been convinced by the hiding Nestor that any attempt to save the man could not succeed and they would only destroy themselves. In a final test, Susan places herself in danger. The malfunctioning Nestor reveals itself by recognizing that harmless infrared rays rather than dangerous gamma rays are involved and by forgetting, in its feeling of superiority, that the other robots have not been trained, as it has, to tell the difference.

  "Escape" involves computers rather than robots, but the problems are the same: in this case, how can a robot (computer) be forced to solve a problem if the solution might involve the death of a human being? Such a conflict with the First Law has, apparently, burned out the computer of a competitor, Consolidated Robots,5 which approaches USR to hire its computer to solve a problem, probably concerning the development of an interstellar hyperatomic or space-warp drive. USR's computer, called "The Brain," incorporates USR's patented emotional brain paths and operates on a childlike, "idiot-savant" level. The ship that it builds turns out to "kill" the occupants (Donovan and Powell) but only temporarily while they are in the space-warp. The computer's emotional imbalance during the drive, however, turns The Brain into a practical joker.

  5. This is the only mention of competition in the robot business.

  "Evidence" presents another problem in discrimination. In "Little Lost Robot" the question was how to detect the one in a group of identical robots that has been instructed in the strongest terms to get lost. In "Evidence" the question is how to tell a humanoid robot from a human when the individual in question stands on his rights as a presumptive human. Stephen Byerley, running for mayor, is accused by political opponents of being a robot. The evidence is presented: no one has seen Byerley sleep or eat. But this is not proof that he does not. He refuses to be searched or X-rayed and wears a device that protects him against X-rays attempted by subterfuge. He practices as a district attorney but does not actually condemn convicted criminals to death (which would violate the First Law). The Asimovian touch is contained in the fact that he is a good district attorney, a good man, and would make a good mayor. When asked if robots are so mentally different from men, Susan Calvin says, "Worlds different. Robots are essentially decent." At the climactic moment of the campaign, Byerley strikes a heckler, something a robot would be unable to do. But after the election, Susan Calvin notes that it would have been possible for him to strike a robot made up to look human.

  "The Evitable Conflict," the final story in I, Robot, concludes the saga of the robots for their first decade at least by dealing with the question of robot superiority and the ambiguity in the First Law about what constitutes harm or good. The Machines, which have become too complex for humans to understand (here Asimov anticipated a number of contemporary computer scientists, as well as an aspect of Cyberpunk), have taken over the operation of the world's economy. For the first time in human history the economy is running smoothly, except for a few small problems here and there. These problems, however, should not occur, and they worry Stephen Byerley, who has now become World Coordinator. He tells Susan Calvin about his investigation. One by one, he and Susan discard hypotheses that the machines are being given wrong data or that their instructions are being ignored. Wrong data or sabotage (by the anti-robot Society for Humanity) simply become part of the data for the next problem and are taken into account by the Machines. The small inefficiencies, they finally decide, have been caused by the Machines themselves as they
shake loose those few persons who cling to the side of the boat for purposes the Machines consider harmful to humanity. The Machines are acting for the ultimate good of the human species, which only the Machines know or can know. Mankind has lost any voice in its own future, but then, if one considers the uncontrolled swings of the economy when it was in the hands of humans and the seemingly inevitable conflicts that accompanied them, humanity never had any control. For all time now, all conflicts are finally evitable. Only the Machines are inevitable.

  One might contrast this attitude toward the omniscient and omnipotent machine with Jack Williamson's treatment of the same theme in "With Folded Hands," which appeared three years before "The Evitable Conflict" and may have been on Asimov's mind. Indeed, the title of Asimov's story might refer to Williamson's conclusion about his "humanoids," who do everything for humanity and leave mankind with nothing to do but sit with folded hands. "The Evitable Conflict" and ''With Folded Hands" exhibit two major differences, however: Asimov's Machines not only control human affairs better than humans but humanity never has been "free," and the Machines do not let humanity know it no longer is in control.

  This account of the stories that make up I, Robot gives only a hint of the qualities that make the stories, and the book, persistently appealing. Except for "Liar!" and "Evidence," these are not stories in which character plays a significant part. Virtually all plot develops through conversation, with little if any action. Nor is there a great deal of local color or description of any kind. The dialogue is a function of the ideas, and the style is transparent.

  At times, as in the climactic moment in which Susan Calvin torments Herbie into insanity with a dilemma, Asimov's unadorned language rises to the demands placed upon it by the narrative. But mostly it lies passively, unambiguously, and virtually invisibly between the reader and the story. While it seldom adds much to enjoyment of the story, it seldom detracts from it either unless the reader demands something that Asimov and the story are unprepared to give.

  The robot stories and almost all Asimov fiction play themselves on a relatively bare stage. The reader perceives only those stage properties that are essential to the plot, and those only in general details. Mercury, the closest planet to the sun and the scene of "Runaround," could have called forth descriptions of the unique qualities of that unusual planet (and has in stories by other authors), but it is presented only in terms of heat and brightness: "The sunlight came down in a white-hot wash and played liquidly around them." The reader is denied even a description of the selenium pool, whatever that might be. Solar Station #5, in "Reason," exists only in terms such as "officer's room," "control room,'' and "engine room." So it is with the rest of the stories.

  The characters in the robot stories fill the requirements for what they must do and little more. Gloria's attachment to Robbie and Robbie's faithful dedication to Gloria make them a pleasantly sentimental pair, but Gloria's parents are stock parents: the foolish but determined mother and the sympathetic but manipulable father. Unless readers pay close attention in the Powell and Donovan stories, they may find it difficult to remember that Powell is English and logical, Donovan is Irish and impulsive. The use of such pairs (as well as larger groupings of friends and colleagues) had become conventional in science fiction by then. Campbell had written a series of early stories about two cosmic explorers, Penton and Blake (as well as a series featuring three scientists, Arcot, Morey, and Wade), and was fond of suggesting his solutions to writers who wrote for him. Later Asimov used a pair almost identical to Powell and Donovan in his juveniles, Lucky Starr and Bigman.

  The antagonists in the robot stories, where such exist, are seldom characterized at all. The employees of USR, however, begin to assume greater life: Robertson, Lanning, Bogert, and finally Susan Calvin herself. The closer the characters work with robots the more interesting characteristics they accumulate. Susan Calvin clearly became a favorite of Asimov's. "As time went on," he wrote in The Rest of the Robots, "I fell in love with Dr. Calvin." She is plain, stiff, forbidding, unemotional, logical "much more like the popular conception of a robot than any of my positronic creations," Asimov continued. She is a character much like Mr. Spock in Star Trek, who became, accidentally one would assume, the catalyst for the popularity of that series. The reader comes to love Susan Calvin too.

  It is the robots who display the "infinite variety" that Shakespeare praised in Cleopatra: Robbie with his more than doglike devotion; the drunken Speedy, caught between imperatives; the arrogant Cutie, blinded by the brilliance of his own logic; the puzzled Davie; the tender Herbie; the Machiavellian Nestor; the childlike Brain; the coolly competent Stephen Byerley; and, in a lesser way because they never appear directly, the omniscient Machines. They all have individualizing names (again, excluding the Machines); this strategy pays tribute to the human trait of naming vehicles and machines but adds to the humanization of the robots. They capture our interest more than the people as they should because it is they who exhibit the variations while the humans remain constant and predictable. I, Robot, though never in the first person, is always about robots, and the characters' reactions to the problems that the robots bring with them create the stories.

  Asimov never identifies with his robots, however. He gives them self-awareness and human characteristics so that the characters (and the readers) can better deal with the problems they present. Readers read the robot stories incorrectly when they begin to care more about what happens to the robots than what happens to the people at least from Asimov's view. Asimov is a rational man, and rationally the robots are still machines: humans should no more become fixated on their endearing characteristics than they should fear their rebellion. All of this, including the lack of action and the conversational mode by which the stories proceed ("The Evitable Conflict" consists entirely of a conversation between Byerley and Susan Calvin), is less important than that each story exists as a puzzle to be solved. The delight of the reader is in the ingenuity with which Asimov's characters solve the puzzle. The robots exist to present the puzzle in their behavior; the characters exist to solve the puzzle.

  This view of Asimov's fiction may explain much of his style. His dialogue, for instance, is a vehicle for describing and then analyzing the problem, and clarity is its most important attribute (robots may have problems understanding human statements, but other humans do not, unless information is deliberately withheld, as in "Risk," a story included in The Rest of the Robots). An emphasis on setting would imply a relevance of place to the outcome that would be misleading; a presentation of human variation would suggest that human differences are the main subject, instead of robot differences. In spite of the fact that "Liar!" and "Evidence" (the stories in which character plays a more important part) are clearly the most effective stories in the book, they are equally clearly most effective because of the more-or-less accidental coming together of the Asimov method with a suitable subject. Susan Calvin's human reaction to Herbie's lies is the means by which the problem is solved and the question of Herbie disposed of. Stephen Byerley's ambiguous presence is the problem of robot superiority that must meet the test of human fear.

  The other stories are less successful as fiction because Asimov does not find a humanly involving method for expressing them. "Liar!" and "Evidence" would be unsuccessful as "robot stories" if it were not for the ingenuity of the solutions to the problems they present; the human problems solve the robot predicament. It is always so in the robot stories: Weston not only must get Robbie and Gloria back together again but must do so in a way that demonstrates Robbie's superiority as a nursemaid; Powell must get Speedy back but in a way exploiting the Three Laws. If readers do not involve themselves in solving the problems, they will miss the basic pleasure offered by the stories in I, Robot.

  As in The Foundation Trilogy, Asimov discovered, or learned from Campbell, the method that best suited his rational temperament and that best developed the kind of ideas he wished to explore: the mystery. As a rational person in an ir
rational world, Asimov had a compulsion that fit perfectly with what Campbell thought science fiction ought to do: that is, to show rationality prevailing over fear, prejudice, sentimentality, short-sightedness, and all the other irrational forces in the world, including accident. Thus the mystery, the puzzle, the success of the logical, unemotional Susan Calvin over all the other less logical, more emotional characters in the stories. "Robbie" was less successful (and less acceptable to Campbell, perhaps) partly because it was not a puzzle, not a mystery. "Reason" was Campbell's kind of story, and Asimov's too, because it presented the puzzle of Cutie's obsession and how to solve it, and the ending was a neat twist that had not been foreseen. The puzzle and the ingenious solution were what sold Asimov's robot stories to Campbell and to his readers. But those were not the stories' only virtues. The concern with the Three Laws also had relevance to human behavior, sometimes stated, more often not. This does not mean simply the overt references to such matters as the Frankenstein complex: the fear of robots and the banning of their use on Earth has more fictional value than philosophic validity. Although clearly motivated by Asimov's dislike for the archetype of the prejudiced, emotion-driven, unthinking person, and enabling him to deal with contrasts in attitudes and behavior, the terrestrial antipathy toward the robots seems less convincing than desirable for reasons of plot. Robot computers are not banned, nor are other non-humanoid robots. The banning of the robots and apprehension concerning them, however, provides many conflicts in a series that has little inevitable conflict built into it. Asimov is able to get around the bans when he desires, particularly in the robot stories published after 1950.