Clare T. Walker

What I’m reading now: I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

This is an oldie-but-goodie. It’s a “novel-in-stories,” or, if you prefer, a volume of linked short stories. All were previously published (most in Astounding Science Fiction from 1941-1950, one in Super Science Stories in 1941.) The original hardcover edition came out in 1950. My paperback edition was printed in 1970.

The epigraph in the front of the book gives us the famous 3 Laws of Robotics: 

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Most of the stories show human beings solving technical glitches in robot behavior. The hinge upon which the solution turns is always a paradoxical and insoluble dilemma brought on by conflicts among the 3 Laws. The robot goes haywire, and it’s up to the human beings to reason out the answer.

The main character, Dr. Susan Calvin, is a robopsychologist: she knows how robots think. On more than one occasion, she outwits a robot and makes it self-destruct under a withering blast of circular, self-contradictory, inescapable logic. (No doubt she was the inspiration for Captain Kirk’s many similar head-to-head combats with computers and androids.)

Authors of linked stories construct a framing device to link the stories together. The framing device of I, Robot is a series of interviews conducted by an unnamed narrator. He interviews Dr. Susan Calvin and, offscreen presumably, two other characters, field technicians Powell and Donovan.

The stories span ten years in Asimov’s development as a writer and thinker, and they are presented chronologically in order of publication. They increase in complexity and sophistication, from a rather basic yet ground-breaking story of a robot babysitter[1] to a vision of a future world run by “thinking machines.”[2]

Examples of other excellent “linked stories:”

1001 Arabian Nights — A despotic prince marries a different woman every night and has her executed in the morning. His latest bride, Scheherazade, saves her life by captivating her new husband with a story. The story is so good that he puts off her execution until the next day just so he can hear another story. This goes on for 1000 more nights, and by the end of it, the prince realizes that he loves Scheherazade and decides not to execute her after all.

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer — Various medieval characters travel together on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket. Along the way, each one tells his or her “tale.”

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury, Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, and The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor — The framing device is time and place: all the stories take place one summer in the life of a 12-year old Midwestern boy in the 1920s (Dandelion Wine), in the fictional town of Winesburg, Ohio in 1919 (Winesburg, Ohio), and in the same decaying urban neighborhood (The Women of Brewster Place).

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien — The stories are linked by the same situation — the Vietnam War — and are told mostly from the point-of-view of a first person narrator named “Tim.”

The Year We Left Home by Jean Thompson — Chronicles 30 years in the life of the same Iowa family. The stories are told from the points-of-view of the various members of the family.

The Jungle Book (1894) and The Second Jungle Book (1895) by Rudyard Kipling — Stories about animals and people in India. Many of them are about Mowgli: one of, if not the original, boy raised by wolves.

The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank — The framing device is the main character, Jane, who chronicles episodes in her life coming-of-age as a woman in the modern world.

The Watson Chronicles by Ann Margaret Lewis — This book contains a double framing device: a series of mysteries solved by Sherlock Holmes and his companions, and a blossoming romance between Dr. Watson and a young woman.

James Herriot’s autobiographical veterinary stories — All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Things Wise and Wonderful, The Lord God Made Them All. As novels, each of the books is thinly plotted, serving as a frame for the entertaining anecdotes of Herriot’s life as a country animal doctor in northern England of the 30s and 40s. Most of the chapters stand alone as stories. Indeed, special collections of Herriot’s stories have been released: Dog Stories, Cat Stories, and various children’s picture books, later compiled as James Herriot’s Treasury for Children.

[1] “Robbie.” First published as “Strange Playfellow” in Super Science Stories. 1940.

[2] “The Evitable Conflict.” Astounding Science Fiction. 1950.

Post a comment below if you can think of any other “novels-in-stories” or volumes of “linked stories” that I missed!

The phrase “bus ride from hell” no doubt conjures up bad memories of trips to and from school on the big yellow bus, or perhaps visions of a cross-country journey you would rather forget. But in his 1946 book The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis really means a bus ride from Hell. The book begins with the narrator boarding a bus in the mean streets of the netherworld and taking a trip that will determine his eternal destiny.

After the narrator boards the bus, it takes off into the sky. Before it reaches its destination, the narrator has endured the sob stories of two fellow passengers and witnessed an all-out brawl on board.

Their destination is a grassy plain on the summit of a high cliff. When the passengers disembark, they discover that they are all nearly transparent, like ghosts. Soon, however, a large crowd of “real” people—solid people—comes to meet them. The narrator witnesses a few encounters between ghosts and solid people before meeting his “own” solid person, a man named George Macdonald, named by Lewis after the 19^th-century Scottish author of the same name. Macdonald serves as the narrator’s guide to the afterlife, similar to the way Virgil guided Dante in The Divine Comedy.

One of the things I love about C.S. Lewis is his uncanny understanding of human nature, especially the ways we deceive ourselves and rationalize our bad behavior, everything from run-of-the-mill pettiness, to desire to control others, to attachment to comforts and addictions, even to the murderous impulses that lead to the worst atrocities in human history. They’re all there, on that plateau, being given the opportunity to choose their fate once and for all. The solid people are glorified human beings sent from Heaven to counsel the ghosts and help them shed the things that are keeping them from God. Some of the ghosts, under the gentle encouragement of their solid guides, do indeed make the choice to surrender to God, at which point they transform into glorified beings themselves. Some of the ghosts refuse God’s love, continue in their stubborn self-will and eventually return to Hell by their own choice. As Lewis says, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it.”

Lewis’s masterpiece “theological fantasy” is a quick read (my paperback edition is only 128 pages long) but sobering: it’s hard not to see oneself in the self-absorbed Poet, or the Bishop who knew it all but rejected God, or the Woman With a Martyr Complex who wanted her deceased husband to leave Heaven so she could continue to “fix” him in Hell, or the Devoted Mother whose love for her son became a dismal obsession.

Like all Lewis’s books, this one could change your life. Highly recommended.

* * *

For more information on C.S. Lewis: the C.S. Lewis Wikipedia entry, “the official” C.S. Lewis website, and the C.S. Lewis entry on Biography.com. Lewis’s most well-known works include The Chronicles of Narnia, a trilogy of science fiction novels (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength), and several works of popular Christian apologetics (Mere Christianity, The Abolition of Man, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce).

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

For more information on George Macdonald: the George Macdonald Wikipedia entry, The Golden Key website, and a biography of him on The Literature Network. Macdonald’s most well-known works include Phantastes (1858), The Princess and the Goblin (1872), and Lilith (1895).

George Macdonald (1824-1905)

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God say, in the end, ‘thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it.” (C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce)