On a sheer numbers basis, I’ve probably read more Asimov short stories over the years than anyone else’s, even if I hadn’t read or even reread one for about a decade before this. Modern readers can get a little sniffy about both Asimov’s style and how dated some of his views are/were. And perhaps that’s why it’s a well I haven’t returned to, but I have to admire the simplicity that others feel suggests shallowness. His writing is clean, and I’d be very happy if the same were said about my work. Having read them when I was young his originality was not diminished by countless imitations. Plus, and importantly, his short stories, involving robots or otherwise, are usually fun. Asimov wasn’t afraid to end (or indeed, to start) a story with a pun or a feghoot.
I’ve picked ‘Galley Slave’ because of the inevitable echo of the current AI ChatGPT debate/furore. In it, a robot (but why a robot? Except that’s what Asimov wrote about, able to imagine a human-sized robot with a positronic brain but seemingly unable to put that brain in a handheld device) is tasked with handling the more tedious chores of academic paper writing, but is suspected and accused of doing far more.
Asimov isn’t the only writer to imagine himself out of a job (Roald Dahl’s ‘The Great Automatic Grammatizator’most notably), except in Asimov’s case, the robot is designed specifically for proof reading and editing, and not for writing from a prompt. Yet that becomes the worry the user has, one which drives him to desperate acts, so Asimov certainly gets that aspect right.
I offer no apologies for choosing an Asimov to kick things off. It makes perfect sense, chronologically and personally. But the great thing about starting points is where you end up.
First published in the December 1957 issue of Galaxy, collected in The Rest of the Robots, 1964
A Personal Anthology 