Odyssey

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I wrote my first robot story, “Robbie,” in May of 1939, when I was only nineteen years old.

What made it different from robot stories that had been written earlier was that I was determinednot to make my robots symbols. They were not to be symbols of humanity’s over-weening arrogance. They werenot to be examples of human ambitions trespassing on the domain of the Almighty. They werenot to be a new Tower of Babel requiring punishment.

Nor were the robots to be symbols of minority groups. They werenot to be pathetic creatures that were unfairly persecuted so that I could make Aesopic statements about Jews, Blacks or any other mistreated members of society. Naturally, I was bitterly opposed to such mistreatment and I made that plain in numerous stories and essays-butnot in my robot stories.

In that case, whatdid I make my robots?-I made them engineering devices. I made them tools. I made them machines to serve human ends. And I made them objects with built-in safety features. In other words, I set it up so that a robotcould not kill his creator, and having outlawed that heavily overused plot, I was free to consider other, more rational consequences.

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