2. “Reason:” “Robbie” would have meant nothing in itself if I had written no more robot stories, particularly since it appeared in one of the minor magazines. However, I wrote a second robot story, “Reason,” and that one John Campbell liked. After a bit of revision, it appeared in the April 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, and there it attracted notice. Readers became aware that there were such things as “positronic robots,” and so did Campbell. That made everything afterward possible.
3. “Liar!:” In the very next issue of Astounding, that of May 1941, my third robot story, “Liar!” appeared. The importance of this story was that it introduced Susan Calvin, who became the central character in my early robot stories. This story was originally rather clumsily done, largely because it dealt with the relationship between the sexes at a time when I had not yet had my first date with a young lady. Fortunately, I’m a quick learner, and it is one story in which I made significant changes before allowing it to appear in I, Robot.
4. “Runaround:” The next important robot story appeared in the March 1942 issue of Astounding. It was the first story in which I listed the Three Laws of Robotics explicitly instead of making them implicit. In it, I have one character, Gregory Powell, say to another, Michael Donovan: “Now, look, let’s start with the Three Fundamental Rules of Robotics-the three rules that are built most deeply into a robot’s positronic brain. “ He then recites them.
Later on, I called them the Laws of Robotics, and their importance to me was threefold:
a) They guided me in forming my plots and made it possible to write many short stories, as well as several novels, based on robots. In these, I constantly studied the consequences of the Three Laws.
b) It was by all odds my most famous literary invention, quoted in season and out by others. If all I have written is someday to be forgotten, the Three Laws of Robotics will surely be the last to go.
c) The passage in “Runaround” quoted above happens to be the very first time the word “robotics” was used in print in the English language. I am therefore credited, as I have said, with the invention of that word (as well as of “robotic,” “positronic,” and “psychohistory”) by the Oxford English Dictionary, which takes the trouble-and the space-to quote the Three Laws. (All these things were created by my twenty- second birthday and I seem to have created nothing since, which gives rise to grievous thoughts within me.)
5. “Evidence:” This was the one and only story I wrote while I spent eight months and twenty-six days in the Army. At one point I persuaded a kindly librarian to let me remain in the locked library over lunch so that I could work on the story. It is the first story in which I made use of a humanoid robot. Stephen Byerley, the humanoid robot in question (though in the story I don’t make it absolutely clear whether he is a robot or not), represents my first approach toward R. Daneel Olivaw, the humaniform robot who appears in a number of my novels. “Evidence” appeared in the September 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.
6. “Little Lost Robot:” My robots tend to be benign entities. In fact, as the stories progressed, they gradually gained in moral and ethical qualities until they far surpassed human beings and, in the case of Daneel, approached the godlike. Nevertheless, I had no intention of limiting myself to robots as saviors. I followed wherever the wild winds of my imagination led me, and I was quite capable of seeing the uncomfortable sides of the robot phenomena.
It was only a few weeks ago (as I write this) that I received a letter from a reader who scolded me because, in a robot story of mine that had just been published, I showed the dangerous side of robots. He accused me of a failure of nerve.
That he was wrong is shown by “Little Lost Robot” in which a robot is the villain, even though it appeared nearly half a century ago. The seamy side of robots is not the result of a failure in nerve that comes of my advancing age and decrepitude. It has been a constant concern of mine all through my career.
7. “The Evitable Conflict:” This was a sequel to “Evidence” and appeared in the June 1950 issue of Astounding. It was the first story I wrote that dealt primarily with computers (I called them “Machines” in the story) rather than with robots per se. The difference is not a great one. You might define a robot as a “computerized machine” or as a “mobile computer.” You might consider a computer as an “immobile robot.” In any case, I clearly did not distinguish between the two, and although the Machines, which don’t make an actual physical appearance in the story, are clearly computers, I included the story, without hesitation, in my robot collection, 1. Robot, and neither the publisher nor the readers objected. To be sure, Stephen Byerley is in the story, but the question of his roboticity plays no role.
8. “Franchise:” This was the first story in which I dealt with computers as computers, and I had no thought in mind of their being robots. It appeared in the August 1955 issue of If: Worlds of Science Fiction, and by that time I had grown familiar with the existence of computers. My computer is “Multivac,” designed as an obviously larger and more complex version of the actually existing “Univac.” In this story, and in some others of the period that dealt with Multivac, I described it as an enormously large machine, missing the chance of predicting the miniaturization and etherealization of computers.
9. “The Last Question:” My imagination didn’t betray me for long, however. In “The Last Question,” which appeared first in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly, I discussed the miniaturization and etherealization of computers and followed it through a trillion years of evolution (of both computer and man) to a logical conclusion that you will have to read the story to discover. It is, beyond question, my favorite among all the stories I have written in my career.
10. “The Feeling of Power:” The miniaturization of computers played a small role as a side issue in this story. It appeared in the February 1958 issue of If and is also one of my favorites. In this story I dealt with pocket computers, which were not to make their appearance in the marketplace until ten to fifteen years after the story appeared. Moreover, it was one of the stories in which I foresaw accurately a social implication of technological advance rather than merely the technological advance itself.
The story deals with the possible loss of ability to do simple arithmetic through the perpetual use of computers. I wrote it as a satire that combined humor with passages of bitter irony, but I wrote more truly than I knew. These days I have a pocket computer and I begrudge the time and effort it would take me to subtract 182 from 854. I use the darned computer. “The Feeling of Power” is one of the most frequently anthologized of my stories.
In a way, this story shows the negative side of computers, and in this period I also wrote stories that showed the possible vengeful reactions of computers or robots that are mistreated. For computers, there is “Someday,” which appeared in the August 1956 issue of Infinity Science Fiction, and for robots (in automobile form) see “Sally,” which appeared in the May-June 1953 issue of Fantastic.
11. “Feminine Intuition:” My robots are almost always masculine, though not necessarily in an actual sense of gender. After all, I give them masculine names and refer to them as “he.” At the suggestion of a female editor, Judy-Lynn del Rey, I wrote “Feminine Intuition,” which appeared in the October 1969 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It showed, for one thing, that I could do a feminine robot, too. She was still metal, but she had a narrower waistline than my usual robots and had a feminine voice, too. Later on, in my book Robots and Empire, there was a chapter in which a humanoid female robot made her appearance. She played a villainous role, which might surprise those who know of my frequently displayed admiration of the female half of humanity.
12. “The Bicentennial Man:” This story, which first appeared in 1976 in a paperback anthology of original science fiction, Stellar #2, edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey, was my most thoughtful exposition of the development of robots. It followed them in an entirely different direction from that in “The Last Question. “ What it dealt with was the desire of a robot to become a man and the way in which he carried out that desire, step by step. Again, I carried the plot all the way to its logical conclusion. I had no intention of writing this story when I started it. It wrote itself, and turned and twisted in the typewriter. It ended as the third favorite of mine among all my stories. Ahead of it come only “The Last Question,” mentioned above, and “The Ugly Little Boy,” which is not a robot story.
13. The Caves of Steeclass="underline" Meanwhile, at the suggestion of Horace L. Gold, editor of Galaxy, I had written a robot novel. I had resisted doing so at first for I felt that my robot ideas only fit the short story length. Gold, however, suggested I write a murder mystery dealing with a robot detective. I followed the suggestion partway. My detective was a thoroughly human Elijah Baley (perhaps the most attractive character I ever invented, in my opinion), but he had a robot sidekick, R. Daneel Olivaw. The book, I felt, was the perfect fusion of mystery and science fiction. It appeared as a three-part serial in the October, November, and December 1953 issues of Galaxy, and Doubleday published it as a novel in 1954.