Just Finished Reading: The Coming of the Robots edited by Sam Moskowitz (FP: 1963) [254pp]

Continuing with my selection of Robot stories (which are some of my favourites but, surprisingly, rare considering that we’re living on the edge of the ‘Age of Robots’) this was a fairly old and fairly standard set of Robot short stories dating from 1934-1952. As with most collections the quality of the stories is a bit hit and miss. Coupled to this is the fact that the oldest tales are approaching 100 years of age. Overall I did find that these stories have not aged particularly well! As with all stories (or at least the vast majority of them) they say far much more about the age they are written in rather than the age they are being projected into. The classic example is of the humanoid taxi driver robot rather than the fully automated vehicle. Such examples abound in this slim work – we have humanoid and often intelligent robots but little else seems to be different from the age they originated in. Little attention seems to have been made to the general impact of robotics on the cultures they existed in and all too often they seemed to have a trivial impact even on the people who built them or used/experienced life with them. I suppose that I’m simply saying that, on the whole, these stories where noticeably unsophisticated – which is a comment you could aim at a great deal of SF of those times!

A case in point is the classic short ‘Helen O’Loy’ (1938) by Lester Del Ray. It revolves around two bachelors who are getting fed up with the service provided by their old automated kitchen – so they tinker with a robotic kit to create the perfect ‘housewife’. This they do with ‘Helen’ – named after Helen of Troy (which I didn’t know before). Unfortunately ‘Helen’ is a too perfect 30’s housewife and one of the bachelors falls in love with her. But it all works out in the end when ‘she’ falls in love with him too – roll credits. Apart from the devastating sexism of the times (forgiven because of the age) it’s a theme that has long continued in SF/Robot stories. Can you fall in love with a machine and can they fall in love with you? Then what? I guess that’ll be a question our grandchildren will probably need to deal with although if the ‘robots’ are anything like the ‘hosts’ in Westworld I predict the slow demise of humanity as the birth rate plummets.

A good handful of the stories did jump out at me for various reasons. I was surprised by a short called ‘I, Robot’ (1938) that *wasn’t* written by Asimov but by Eando Binder and was essentially the retelling of Frankenstein for a more ‘modern’ audience. Then there was ‘True Confession’ (1939) by F Orlin Tremaine which revolved around a robot becoming self-aware and using that self-awareness to protect his creator and his daughter (because ALL scientists have daughters – beautiful or otherwise). The other one which I found interesting (and rather gruesome in places) was ‘Rex’ (1934) by Hal Vincent with another accidentally self-aware machine who decided (after the appropriate study) that humans and human society were terribly inefficient and who decided to ‘fix’ the problem whether people wanted it to or not. Prescient or simple scaremongering?

Taken on its merits (and taking into account its age) this wasn’t a bad collection and no doubt would have entertained people just as much in the 60’s as the stories did in the Pulp magazines in the 30’s and 40’s. Today though I found them too dated to be much fun. Reasonable, but only for collectors of robot stories I think.