Are we destined to exploit, or be exploited by, servants to whom we never really relate? The humans in the most on-the-nose "robot as slave" story in this anthology, Clifford D. Simak’s "I Am Crying All Inside" (1969), at least recognise this tragedy for what it is. Other stories, meanwhile, hint at the possibility of happier outcomes.
Lester Del Rey’s "Helen O’Loy" (1938) borders on the unreadable now, not so much for its laughable sexual politics as for its wincingly juvenile dialogue. But Del Rey was no dummy, and with a bit of patience the reader will begin to see something really quite revolutionary going on as our male protagonists, proud owners of a fembot servant, begin to to discover, through her example, what real love is, and how a real marriage works. It is, quite unexpectedly, one of the most extraordinary male coming-of-age tales in science fiction.
A full generation later, Sandra McDonald’s 2012-vintage "Sexy Robot Mom" tells an analogous tale for a different political moment, when an outcast human discovers, in the algorithmic behaviour of an unthinking robot, a moral code worth striving for.
That’s the exciting and terrifying thing about personal robots: their very existence challenges us to become better people.
OLD ROBOTS ARE THE WORST
Bruce Boston
Bruce Boston was born in Chicago in 1943, and grew up in Southern California, graduating from the University of California, Berkeley. Deeply involved in psychedelia and the political protests of the 1960s (experiences that informed his novel Stained Glass Rain (2003)), he has worked as a computer programmer, college professor, technical writer, book designer, movie projectionist, gardener, and furniture mover – but he’s best known as a poet, with a Bram Stoker Award and a Pushcart Prize taking pride of place on his groaning trophy shelf. He now lives in Ocala, Florida.
VIRTUOSO
Herbert Goldstone
Herbert Goldstone (1920–2009) was for many years the political editor of the Long Island Daily Press, and public relations advisor to the Nassau County Democratic Party. His tastes naturally tended towards nonfiction, but he did publish the political satire The Wisenheimer Machine, The Jubilee of Touchstone Able (a novel about buddies in World War 2), and this story, his only venture into science fiction. A lot of stories of the period wondered whether there was anything that machines couldn’t do better than humans. Goldstone went a step further: if machines could best us, then what would they choose to do?
"Sir?"
The Maestro continued to play, not looking up from the keys.
"Yes, Rollo?"
"Sir, I was wondering if you would explain this apparatus to me."
The Maestro stopped playing, his thin body stiffly relaxed on the bench. His long supple fingers floated off the keyboard.
"Apparatus?" He turned and smiled at the robot. "Do you mean the piano, Rollo?"
"This machine that produces varying sounds. I would like some information about it, its operation and purpose. It is not included in my reference data."
The Maestro lit a cigarette. He preferred to do it himself. One of his first orders to Rollo when the robot was delivered two days before had been to disregard his built-in instructions on the subject.
"I’d hardly call a piano a machine, Rollo," he smiled, "although technically you are correct. It is actually, I suppose, a machine designed to produce sounds of graduated pitch and tone, singly or in groups."
"I assimilated that much by observation," Rollo replied in the brassy baritone which no longer sent tiny tremors up the Maestro’s spine. "Wires of different thickness and tautness struck by felt-covered hammers activated by manually operated levers arranged in a horizontal panel."
"A very cold-blooded description of one of man’s nobler works," the Maestro remarked drily. "You make Mozart and Chopin mere laboratory technicians."
"Mozart? Chopin?" The duralloy sphere that was Rollo’s head shone stark and featureless, its immaculate surface unbroken but for twin vision lenses. "The terms are not included in my memory banks."
"No, not yours, Rollo," the Maestro said softly. "Mozart and Chopin are not for vacuum tubes and fuses and copper wire. They are for flesh and blood and human tears."
"I do not understand," Rollo droned.
"Well," the Maestro said, smoke curling lazily from his nostrils, "they are two of the humans who compose, or design successions of notes—varying sounds, that is, produced by the piano or by other instruments, machines, that produce other types of sounds of fixed pitch and tone.
"Sometimes these instruments, as we call them, are played, or operated, individually; sometimes in groups—orchestras, as we refer to them—and the sounds blend together, they harmonize. That is they have an orderly mathematical relationship to each other which results in—"
The Maestro threw up his hands.
"I never imagined," he chuckled, "that I would some day struggle so mightily, and so futilely, to explain music to a robot!"
"Music?"
"Yes, Rollo. The sounds produced by this machine and others of the same category are called music."
"What is the purpose of music, sir?"
"Purpose?"
The Maestro crushed the cigarette in an ash tray. He turned to the keyboard of the concert grand and flexed his fingers briefly.
"Listen, Rollo."
The wraith-like fingers glided and wove the opening bars of Clair de Lune, slender and delicate as spider silk. Rollo stood rigid, the fluorescent light over the music rack casting a bluish jeweled sheen over his towering bulk, shimmering in the amber vision lenses.
The Maestro drew his hands back from the keys and the subtle thread of melody melted reluctantly into silence.
"Claude Debussy," the Maestro said. "One of our mechanics of an era long passed. He designed that succession of tones many years ago. What do you think of it?"