“She understands robots like a sister…”
The comparison is made specifically by Peter Bogert, second from the top at U.S Robots, much it might as well have been said by any of the men. The “she” is the brilliant Dr. Susan Calvin and her character is perhaps even more revolutionary than the robots. Susan Calvin is the central human figure in this panorama of interconnected short stories and she is smart, tough, something of a visionary and…a cold fish. Give Asimov credit for breaking with tradition that would still be in place well beyond the publication date in which it seemed that only white men who all looked like they worked at IBM were the main characters in science fiction. The movies, at any rate, which is where most of America got its vision of the genre. The comparison here is completed with Bogert’s explanation, “….comes from hating human beings so much, I think.” Give Asimov extra credit for realizing that not all men shared his progressive view of the future of women in the rapidly developing scientific technologies.
"It was like the whistling of a piccolo many times magnified"
In the years since the publication of I, Robot, robots have died a thousand deaths in the big and small screen. For Stanley Kubrick, a dying robot sounded likes like a British guy trying to keep a stiff upper lip in the grips of a death rattle that sounded like “A Bicycle Built for Two.” For most people today, the sound is probably a high-pitched distinctly electronic sound akin to something along the lines of flushing sound waves down a toilet. For Asimov, the sound of a robot dying—actually being murdered by the logical superiority of Susan Calvin, was high pitched, but decidedly less electronic. A piccolo, for those not aware, is like a small flute only pitched slightly higher. So, although today’s robot death scream may not quite sound exactly like Asimov had in mind, it is easy enough to see his influence lingers.
"He was a person just like you"
Little Gloria Weston, whose only friend in the world was a robot named Robbie that could not even reproduce human speech, puts the entire metaphorical center of the Asimov’s collection of short stories in focus. Robbie has been cruelly given the boot by a mother who cannot even understand why she fears the rise of the machines. Gloria knows exactly why she feels the way she does, however: Robbie “was a person just like you and me.” For the most part, the various robots in the book are not designed to look like a toaster or a microwave oven or vacuum cleaner or even a dog or cat or eagle or whale. They replicate men right now down to the construction of their positronic designed not simply to mimic human brains, but even situated in the spatial cavity like human brains. The robots are metaphors for humans; more precisely, for human evolution and understanding. Gloria gets it even if her mother is stubbornly resistant to the entire premise.
The Talking Robot
Gloria’s tale is related in the opening story of I, Robot and it is important to keep in mind that the framing device connecting the stories is one purporting to tell the history of robotics. As such, the stories trace a linear progression through time. In that opening story, as Gloria’s family takes her to exciting world of New York City in the future of 1998, Gloria is introduced to another robot. A talking robot! A robot that is described as “a tour de force, a thoroughly impractical device, possessing publicity value only.” By the second decade of the 21st century, the inherent metaphor of the Talking Robot is richer than Asimov could ever have dreamed. He was being facetious, of course, because the Talking Robot is not being presented as a marvel of science, but a failure of marketing. The twain did not always meet any more then than it does now. Of course, the Talking Robot stands out from most others in the book not by virtue of his talking, but by virtue of his being 25 square miles of wires and cables. The Talking Robot is a a metaphor for missed opportunities stimulated by lack of imagination a particularly cutting swipe at capitalism being the Talking Robot of that lack of imagination.
“But the man is quite inhuman, Dr. Lanning.”
Arguably, the most important story in I, Robot is “Evidence” in which one politician accuses his opponent of actually being a…robot in disguise. The statement above is made by Francis Quinn in relation to Stephen Byerley. It is a purely metaphorical statement, of course, because Quinn is suggesting to his colleague that his political nemesis is not human despite all indications that he is. The metaphorical quotient here is undetermined, however: is being quite inhuman a figurative statement asserting that Byerley is more than human or less than human? Where does a robot fall on that spectrum? And are all robots in the same spot? Are some robots more human than others while some are less so and if so, then why exactly? Succinctly stated by Quinn, it is an ethical question that is inexorably on its way and will one day have to be faced. If Byerley, as Quinn suggests, a robot, then his statement becomes both less and more metaphorical. The loss of metaphorical weight arrives by virtue of the statement become true, but is enlarged by the unanswered question still lingering: is inhuman a metaphor for an inferior being or a superior being?
