R. Anthony Mahan heralds author of "I, Robot".

by Contributing Author on 05/17/10

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm

2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

 

With these three simple sentences, a young aspiring author by the name of Isaac Asimov had unknowingly changed the science fiction genre forever. When Asimov entered the world of science fiction writing, the robot followed a simple pattern: Go haywire, turn evil, and rebel against its masters. The notion of robots going wrong goes back as far as the word "robot" itself. "R.U.R.", the Czech play which coined the word in 1920, followed this plotline, yet hardly invented it. Earlier tales such as Frankenstein and the Jewish folktale of The Golem delivered the apparent moral that artificial life was an inherently bad idea. 

Asimov frowned on stories of robots rebelling. He found it not only hackneyed, but unrealistic. All technology has safeguards to make sure it's as safe to use as possible. If robots of the same caliber as those in the world of science fiction actually existed, wouldn't they possess safeguards as well?

Asimov was one of the first science fiction writers to treat the genre's more unrealistic elements with an examination of how they would function in the real world, employing a technique far ahead of his time.

Over the years Asimov penned numerous short stories and novels featuring robots, nine of which are collected in "I, Robot." His first robot story (and, fittingly enough, the first story in the collection) is titled "Robbie", which features a young girl named Gloria being watched over by a nursing robot. Her mother fears Robbie, accusing it of being unfeeling, having the potential to go wrong, and many other fears that would have been considered valid in the stories of a different author from the period. However, Robbie never demonstrates such flaws, and in the end Gloria's mother must accept robots aren't the evil creatures she believed them to be. The readers of the story would need to do the same thing themselves shortly afterwards.

For the most part, Asimov treated the robot as neither menace nor pathos, but as they actually are: machines. Tools which hold no morality of their own, positive or negative, but which are created to work efficiently and be safe to use. The author was able to constantly find new ways to interpret the Three Laws and employ them in fiction. One may suspect that setting up limits for your characters, saying there are things they absolutely cannot do, would restrict creativity, but instead it granted Asimov a creative freedom unseen before. A later story, titled "---That Thou art Mindful of Him", would even go as far to use the Three Laws to induce the very thing they were created to avoid!

Asimov's attempts to embellish science fiction with the scientific accuracy of the time and natural human reactions to the genre's more fantastic elements gave the genre a refreshing dose of realism that could almost universally be agreed upon as an improvement. Many later writers would come to claim him as an influence, including this writer. He even managed to leave his mark not merely on science fiction, but science itself, with many scientists deriving inspiration from his writing. It's worth noting that he created the word "robotics."

I strongly recommend his work, though not merely his robot stories. The Foundation series, Galactic Empire series, as well as his non-fiction writing are all definitely worth a look. However, if you're unsure just where to start, I'd have to say that "I, Robot" is the way to go!

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Anthem Reviewed Ayn Rand's view on Collectivism - Joe Vigloitti's view of Anthem

by Contributing Author on 05/07/10

            Equality presents a challenge to the collectivist society which has spawned him in a mating ward, as Ayn Rand presented a challenge to the communist idealism that transformed her native Russia. Both valued the individual above the unabated will of the state; and in Rand's Anthem. Equality exists in a society where individualism has been eradicated. And so Equality speaks from the position of the state "We are twenty-one years old," rather from the perspective of the individual: "I am twenty-one years old." There can be no individual will or self-identification because it interferes with the unchanging metaphysical purpose of the state.

            Yet, it is the scholars and the intellectuals who have crafted an individual-deprived state; and it is the common man -- the common, lowly street sweeper -- that dares to think independently of the state before understanding just what it is to think independently of the scholars and intellectuals that conform to established patterns of thought. Equality is not just concerned with the labors assigned him by the rulers; he is concerned with and intrigued by the natural world. He "rediscovers" electricity in a tunnel he stumbles upon, and he stumbles upon love when he first sees the girl he refers to ever after as "The Golden One." Rand ultimately likens Equality to Prometheus, and the Golden One to Gaea, although one might well walk away from Anthem with the understanding that Plato"s chained individual has escaped the cave.

Rand's Anthem is short and pointed, yet there is a tenderness to her writing that captivates the reader, and draws one away from the overbearing and suffocating city in which Equality dwells. Hopelessness gives way to light, to the love Equality finds in the Golden One, and in himself. It is in these small moments of poetic justice that the reader escapes the city with Equality and the Golden One, following them across the fields and into the woods, to discover relics of a long forgotten past: an old home, clothes of varying colors, and above all, books. It is through learning and understanding that Equality becomes Prometheus, and the Golden One Gaea, and through their leaning that they understand freedom and the individual.

The house becomes Equality's Walden in certain respects; and he endeavors to begin society anew. Yet it is in Equality's sense of individualism, so adverse to collectivist orthodoxy, that leads him to declare that he must be free of his brothers to be free. Yet, such an extremist sense of individualism is tempered by his later declaration that he will one day fight for the rights of other men. But Rand did not complete the idea: Freedom isn't necessarily being free of one's brothers, but being able to be free among them. Aristotle finds in man a rational, social animal, and Rand's Equality is already longing for a new society to rediscover the knowledge of the past that paves the way to a better future. Equality can be seen as the progenitor of a social contract, just as the American Founders were the progenitors of the United States Constitution.

Undeniably, one of the most important messages the reader takes away from Rand's Anthem is one of self-autonomy. Sapped of individual spirit, and will, and choices, the society for which the citizens are mindlessly prepared ceases to progress, and human freedom is systematically sacrificed and destroyed for the preservation of the state. It is not the hallowed halls lined with the intellectual elite or the commanding rooms of leading classes that drive the power of nations. Rather, the power of nations resides in the voluntary state and free condition of its individual people.

* The authors'' views which are expressed on this blog are not necessarily those of FutureWord.

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