February 16, 2005
I, Robot
Cory Doctorow writes:
Last spring, in the wake of Ray Bradbury pitching a tantrum over Michael Moore appropriating the title of Fahrenheit 451 to make Fahrenheit 9/11, I conceived of a plan to write a series of stories with the same titles as famous sf shorts, which would pick apart the totalitarian assumptions underpinning some of sf's classic narratives.Today, Infinite Matrix magazine published the latest of these, a story called "I, Robot," which describes the police state that would have to obtain if you were going to have a world where there was only one kind of robot allowed and only one company was allowed to make it.
Check out the story. I haven't read it yet, but I've enjoyed everything he's written to date, so I expect this one to be fun, too. He's even managed to permanently implant a few ideas in my head over the past few years.
This story was terrible. Is the author a professional writer?
Yes, a professional SF writer. I'm guessing you are not a scifi fan in general. Or, if so, please explain what about the tale you found objectionable. I didn't think it was as good as some of his stories, but it was still enjoyable—the look at the social underpinnings of Asimov's concept of a single robots manufacturer was particularly interesting as well as the significant nod towards 1984. If you're objecting merely to style, that's a problem with all SF. I have yet to read an SF that's incredibly well-crafted, but that's not the point. The point is/are the ideas, the characters, and the plots, but mostly the ideas.