Robot Dreams: Isaac Asimov’s Short Stories of Robots, Multivac and the Last Question
How will robots shape the life of humanity? What role will these strange machines, made by humans almost in their own image, play in a future more or less distant? Robot Dreams (1986) gathers some of Isaac Asimov’s best short stories to answer those questions, and many others about computers, aliens, time and the end of the universe. Here is a guide to the stories I enjoyed most.
Author: Isaac Asimov (1920–1992)
Title: Robot Dreams (1986)
Format: English paperback (Gollancz), 480 pages
Scope: Collection of science fiction short stories
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/1857983351 (ASIN 1857983351)
Mathematics, Time and Rivalry
If you are interested in mathematics, The Feeling of Power is essential. In the distant future, a man discovers that sums can be done with pencil and paper, without computers. A general sees in it a way to guide manned missiles and war machines without the huge cost of building a computer. It is a short tale showing that the human mind is far more remarkable than any machine, and it ends darkly: the gentle discoverer, who saw arithmetic as a hobby, cannot bear the thought that his discovery will bring destruction.
In The Ugly Little Boy, scientists bring a small Neanderthal child from the past into the present. Timmie develops a motherly bond with his nurse, Miss Fellowes, who comforts him with films and stories; he learns to read, and she realises he needs a child of his own age to play with. The Billiard Ball is an unsettling story of rivalry between two university friends, one a double Nobel laureate and the other a millionaire, who argue about anti-gravity until a chilling ending.
The Last Question and the Robot Stories
The Last Question follows humanity from the first colonies to the death of the stars. Oil runs out and is replaced by solar power, securing billions more years, but the question people keep asking their computers is how to reverse entropy. The answer is always the same: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER. The ending is one of the most famous in science fiction.
Little Lost Robot is about a missing robot with a small variation in the Three Laws and Susan Calvin’s efforts to find it, a clear blend of science fiction and detective story. In the title story, Robot Dreams, a modified robot begins to dream, and Calvin has to make a simple but compromising decision about the new model. It is a profound story about the reach of human technology that can make your hair stand on end.
Aliens, Multivac and Other Stories
Breeds There a Man...? turns a dispute over a force field into a philosophical question: are humans nothing more than bacteria cultivated by higher beings? In Hostess, an alien scientist staying with an ordinary couple looks for the cure for a disease that affects four of the galaxy’s five intelligent species, but not humans, until a sixth, hidden species is revealed. Sally is about robot cars and ends with a burst of action, and Strikebreaker takes a labour dispute to the small asteroid Elsevere.
Multivac, the great supercomputer, appears in several stories: The Machine That Won the War asks who really won a war, humans or the computer; in Franchise Multivac chooses humanity’s rulers by questioning a single voter; and in Jokester it is used to discover the origin of humour, with terrible consequences. Eyes Do More Than See imagines humans as beings of pure energy, one of whom longs for the matter he has left behind, and The Martian Way shows Martian colonists solving an interplanetary crisis by fetching water from beyond the asteroid belt.
The collection closes with lighter and stranger pieces: Does a Bee Care?, Light Verse, Spell My Name with an S, where changing one letter of a name causes political chaos, True Love, about a man who programs a computer to find his perfect match, The Last Answer, where a dead scientist meets the voice of the creator, and Lest We Remember, about an employee whose memory is transformed by an experimental drug. It is a generous sampler of Asimov at his most inventive.
As an Amazon Associate, this site earns from qualifying purchases.
Part of the reading recommendations featured on books.sapiensverbum.com.
