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Page 48
possible to think up a new angle out of the sixty-one words of the Three Laws."
The Asimov robot stories as a whole may respond best to an analysis based on that ambiguity and on the ways in which Asimov played 40 variations upon a theme. The importance to the evolution of science fiction, at least in the period between 1940 and 1950, was that this was an intellectual development. The emotional response the fear of the machine, the fear of the creature turning on its creator was derided. In the robot stories, such responses are characteristic of foolish, unthinking people, religious fanatics, short-sighted labor unions. The Frankenstein complex may be observably true in human nature (and this, along with its appeal to human fears of change and the unknown, may explain its persistence in literature), but it is false to humanity's intellectual aspirations to be rational and to build rationally. Blind emotion, sentimentality, prejudice, faith in the impossible, unwillingness to accept observable truth, failure to use one's intellectual capacities or the resources for discovering the truth that are available, these were the evils that Campbell and Asimov saw as the sources of human misery. They could be dispelled, they thought, by exposure to ridicule and the clear, cool voice of reason, though always with difficulty and never completely.
"Robbie," for instance, considers the question of unreasoning opposition to robots: Grace Weston's concern about Robbie, the villagers' fear of him, New York's curfew for robots. Mrs. Weston, who herself has an unreasoning determination to get rid of Robbie, says, "People aren't reasonable about these things." The climax of the story, in which Robbie moves swiftly to save Gloria from being run down by a tractor, makes clear the advantages of the robot's single-minded concern for its function and its instantaneous response to a crisis that paralyzes Gloria's parents for vital heartbeats.
"Runaround" is an exercise in the conflict between two of the Three Laws. Speedy, a valuable new robot designed for use in the mines of Mercury, has been ordered to get selenium from a pool. But he is found circling the pool acting drunk, and it turns out that carbon monoxide released by volcanic activity in the area can combine with iron to form volatile iron carbonyl. At a certain distance from the pool Speedy's instinct for self-preservation (the Third Law) exactly balances the necessity to obey orders (the Second Law). Powell is able to break Speedy out of his deadly circle only by placing himself in danger so that Speedy must rescue him (the First Law).
Many of the stories develop from unforeseen consequences of the

 
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