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always rational and humans are not. Humans act for emotional reasons, and, ultimately, so does Andrew. Andrew, indeed, has become human. |
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Although "That Thou Art Mindful of Him" and "The Bicentennial Man" are fitting conclusions for Asimov's robot chronicles, Asimov wrote seven more robot stories. |
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"Franchise" (If, August 1955) extrapolates the exit-polling processes into the selection, by Multivac, of a single, typical voter whose choices act for everyone. |
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"Think!" (Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Spring 1977), describes an experiment to create a laser-encephalogram that accidentally results in telepathy. During the experimental demonstration, however, the computer starts communicating telepathically to create a new problem. |
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"True Love" (The American Way, February 1977) deals with an attempt by a man to find the perfect mate. During the process of analyzing first the available women in the world and then himself, the computer becomes more and more like the protagonist, and when the woman is at last identified, the computer arranges for the hero to be arrested for a malfeasance in office and plans to welcome the woman as his own true love. |
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"Too Bad!" (Microverse, November 1989) describes a process like nanotechnology, or the miniaturization of computers or robots to the size of cells or even molecules. In "Too Bad!," however, the robot is created to be miniaturized and used to seek out and destroy cancer cells in his creator. Sudden expansion, as in Asimov's novelization of Fantastic Universe, would kill the patient and the attending doctors and nurses. The process works perfectly but the recovering patient discovers that the robot destroyed itself, by miniaturizing itself to the size of an electron and jetting itself into space to blow up, rather than endanger the life of its creator, something the scientist finds "too bad!'' |
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"Robot Dreams" was created for the anthology Robot Dreams (1986) and is the last Susan Calvin story. A young female computer expert uses fractal geometry to produce an added complexity in the brain of LVX-1 ("Elvex"), but calls upon Calvin when the robot begins to dream. Calvin asks Elvex to describe his dream of robots bowed down with toil; in his dream Elvex remembers only the Third Law, not the first two. All this reveals a previously unsuspected unconscious layer in the robot mind, not necessarily under the control of the Three Laws. When Elvex reveals that a man appears in his dream saying "Let my people go," and the man is himself, Calvin neutralizes his brain with an electron gun. |
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