Mar
15th
2018
A Non-Pony Story to Recommend · 6:59pm Mar 15th, 2018
I've been dutifully:
Working my way through the various bits of fiction that have been nominated for this year's Nebula Awards--voting deadline's at the end of March! I've got one more of the novels to get to--though on my ballot, Mur Lafferty's Six Wakes is the one to beat followed closely by Daryl Gregory's Spoonbenders--and I've just started working my way through the short fiction nominees.
The first one I clicked on, though, demanded to be shared here, the short story "Fandom for Robots" by Vina Jie-Min Prasad. It doesn't quite have an ending, but it's pretty fun.
Mike
To paraphrase the New Yorker, on the Internet, nobody cares that you're a robot.
Thank you for sharing this. It gives me a warm feeling in my heuristic emotional subroutines.
Well, following Asimov's categorization, I've always had a bit of suspicion of robot-as-pathos, but this is quite competently executed for that.
(Side note: we're still stuck in those two main categories, aren't we? We need some more good robot-as-well-engineered-product stories!)
See if this rings a bell.
pipette: The Journal of Analytical Criticism
Anderson, Poul, "The Critique of Impure Reason"
An intelligent robot built to mine ore on Mercury refuses to do so because this is so crass. IZK–99 (pronouncedIsaac) has higher literary and critical goals. The protagonist and his girl friend create a terrible science fiction pulp novelThunder Beyond Venus,as by Charles Pilchard [herring]. They also createpipette: The Journal of Analytical Criticismin which "Pierre Hareng" [herring, again], Department of English, Miskatonic University, praises the book in the most esthetic and erudite manner. This journal is ostensibly sent to the robot as a tasteful and discriminating person by theManana Literary Society. IZK–99 decides that it must go to Mercury to gain experience in order to write this kind of literature.
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"...did these puny Terrans think they could stop QUADGOP THE MERCOTAN?..."
(Hoo boy, let's see who gets that...)
4817776 Without Google? That would have been a bear, and I've read each of E. E. "Doc" Smith's Lensmen series (admittedly decades ago).
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I like the idea:
Someone had in the comments of the story in question that readers should continue it by writing fanfiction about what happens next.
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I've read no Smith and hardly any Anderson. I hang my sorry head in shame.
Or rather, I guess, I hang Applejack's sorry head in shame...
Mike
4818330 None? Hang on! I can go into my basement and box up an emergency care package! Breathe, darn it!
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Well, Smith is great if your brain can run the emulator for "ten-year-old-boy." Otherwise it'll hang on the first brodignangian dreadnaught.
4818355 You're only young once, but you can be immature forever! For the Space Patrol!!
A charming story!