|
|
|
|
|
|
I, Robot. The title represents an initial irony, since it is also the title of a story by Eando Binder (a pseudonym for Earl and Otto Binder, used after 1940 by Otto alone). The publication of Binder's story in Amazing, January 1939, and a chance meeting with Otto on May 7 of the same year at the Queens Science Fiction League inspired Asimov's first robot story. In 1950, when Martin Greenberg of Gnome Press was preparing to publish the book, Greenberg dismissed Asimov's suggested title, Mind and Iron (a phrase used in the introduction), and suggested I, Robot. Asimov said that was impossible because of Binder's earlier story. "Fuck Eando Binder," Greenberg said, and I, Robot it was. Asimov credits the title with helping to sell the book. As a further irony, the book contains no first-person robot stories. The book consists of nine stories united not only by their concern with robots but by the introduction and a continuing narrative between stories, which was constructed, for the book, as an interview by a reporter for Interplanetary Press with Susan Calvin when she reaches the age of seventy-five. The linking narrative also functions as an account of the difficulties and successes of United States Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. (hereafter abbreviated as USR) and a history of robotics itself, since Calvin joined USR as a robopsychologist upon earning her Ph.D. in cybernetics. In the process of bringing the stories together, Asimov provided dates that were missing from the original versions.1 Out of them I have derived the following chronology of events: |
|
|
|
|
| Susan Calvin is born. The same year Lawrence Robertson founds
USR. | 1996 | "Robbie" is constructed as a non-speaking robot and sold to the
Weston family as a nursemaid for Gloria. | 1998 | "Robbie" ("Strange Playfellow"), Super Science Stories, September
1940. New York passes curfew law for robots. | 2002 | Dr. Alfred Lanning demonstrates a mobile, speaking robot (intended
for the mines of Mercury) in a psychomath seminar. Susan Calvin
is present. | 2003 | Calvin earns bachelor's degree. | 2003-2007 | Use of robots is banned on Earth because of opposition by
labor unions and fundamentalist religious groups. | 2007 | Calvin earns her Ph.D. and joins USR as "the first great practitioner
of a new art," robopsychology. Lanning is director of research. USR
has hit a financial low point and is forced to turn to the extraterrestrial
market. Robots are about twelve feet tall, clumsy, and not
much good. |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
1. Some confusion in dates remains: the Introduction says that Susan Calvin joined USR in 2008; she says, in the lead-in to "Runaround," that it was 2007. "Runaround" also refers to fifty-year-old antique mounts (robots). |
|
|
|
|
|