Going back to the beginning of I, Robot shows the tricks memory plays. I didn’t remember at all that it was set in 2057 in the first story. The first robot with a voice doesn’t come out until 2002! Somehow in my mind it all takes place in 1940, when it was written. It doesn’t feel like any time in the future, and didn’t even when I read it as a kid. Susan Calvin gets her Ph.D. in 2008. She could be a Doper!
And the name of the corporation is not U. S. Robotics, as I’ve seen written, but U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men.
In the 20s and 30s the terms robots and mechanical men were used more or less interchangeably. I don’t see in a quick flip-through that Asimov ever talks about the mechanical men, though, just robots.
Does anybody know if he ever explains in any of the robot books what the difference between robots and mechanical men are?
I suspect that mechanical men would be a reference to humanoid robots as opposed to most robots that actually look more like our modern conception of robots that don’t have arms and legs and heads. As I recall, several of his early stories were about non-humanoid robots.
U. S. Robotics is a real company in this world that makes, among other things, modems. Their name was doubtless inspired by the Asimov company, but it’s different.
And Dr. Calvin, if you are a member, send me a PM.
I don’t remember a single story about non-humanoid robots. And in every single story they are referred to as robots, and never as mechanical men. Can you give me a specific?
The Will Smith movie, which I’ve never seen, called the company U.S. Robotics. That seems to be the source.
No, U. S. Robotics as an actual company is much older than the Will Smith movie. I had also heard the name was inspired by the Asimov story.
Regarding the Mechanical Men, presumably the U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men P.R. department decided that that was too threatening, what with the strong anti-robot sentiment preventing their use on Earth, and downplayed that term in the advertising. I do not remember the term being used for a single device in any of Dr. Asimov’s stories.
Perhaps there was a merger between two companies that produced the same product. The Acme Robot Co. and Mechanical Men Amalgamated merged to become US Robots and Mechanical Men.
I mentioned this recently in another thread. Robbie, the first story in the series, was originally set in 1982. The date later got bumped back in re-publications.
I agree with you about the way the stories feel. I think that was one of Asimov’s biggest flaws. No matter what planet they were on or how far in the future they were in, all of this stories felt like they were set in Brooklyn in 1940.
Yep, the name was picked by the founders based on Asimov’s writings in order to appeal to their target customers. This was way back when modems were only used by hard-core techies.
Their first product was a mail-order, do-it-yourself modem kit. They had to refund everyone’s money when they figured out they couldn’t afford to sell it at that price.
Edit: The name caused a lot of confusion too; and rightly so. They were always getting calls from school teachers that wanted to take their kids on a tour of a factory that built robots.
“Victory Unintentional” describes robots, the ZZ series, built to survive on Jupiter. They’re low and heavy, much like the Mesklinites of Hal Clement’s Mission of Gravity.
The story is in The Rest of the Robots collection, which also has robots designed for the moon (“Robot AL-76 Goes Astray” and Titan (“First Law”) though both are joke stories in which the robots are not described.
The robot in “Escape” is The Brain, which is said over and over to be a thinking machine with no body, or rather a ball containing the positronic brain along with a roomful of sensory equipment. What’s interesting is not that it’s still called a robot; it’s that their competitor’s thinking machine*, which does not have a positronic brain and does not have a personality or a voice or anything at all other than the equivalent of a motherboard is also called a robot.
So what the hell is Asimov’s definition of a robot? And what is a mechanical man, since there is no possible definition that would include the ZZ robots or The Brain as mechanical men. These stories muddy the answer rather than clarify it.
That’s why I’m wondering whether Asimov tackles this in some later robot novel (I didn’t read his books from the 80s on) or an essay or an introduction somewhere. It’s not in the stories.
That thinking machine is destroyed when it is given an irreconcilable conflict to process. That means Asimov is responsible for the idiot cliche! Fie on him!
Oh, and there are also non-humaniform robots in “…That Thou Should Pay Homage to him”. Things like a tiny robotic dragonfly, that autonomously hunts insects, and does nothing else.
