The Positronic Man
(category: science fiction)by
Isaac Asimov & Robert Silverberg
published by Pan Books in 1993(based partly on Asimov's 1976 short story, The Bicentennial Man)
Nick read a library book, in April 2010
Nick's rating: 6 out of 10
Nick's opinion:
Another of Asimov's explorations of robots and their three laws... I don't really believe the logic that allows this robot to commit suicide despite the third law (to protect its own existence). Still...
The book is just a tad unbelievable with its view of the future. Robots in every household and several planets settled -- and that's in 2007. Okay, all near-future books are subject to unfortunate comparisons with reality. The shrinking population of Earth is harder to accept.
After 200 years -- by the end of the story -- Earth has lost most of its population to the space settlements. All the go-getters have got up and gone, only the placid, unimaginative stay-at-homes have remained, so Earth's remaining people are slow and steady and failing to breed. Perhaps this is simply an American point of view; a present day European could have a different view of "new world" versus "old world" drives and creativity...
The basic theme is slavery versus humanity: slavery is acceptable if the slaves are declared to be not human. As an exploration of black-vs-white in the US, the story is not too bad. As a science fiction story of robot liberation, it's a bit boring, almost twee... over sweet. It was written before the Robin Williams movie, The Bicentennial Man -- but I can easily see this story as the inspiration for what I believe was a sickeningly sweet, embarrassingly awful movie.
Read the book for its place in Asimov's robot series. Or save time, read the short story and you won't have wasted quite so much possibly valuable reading time.
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