What if we walked the fine line between humanity and machine, and that line slowly blurred? That’s what happens throughout Isaac Asimov’s novelette Bicentennial Man. Let’s get into the review.
Asimov included this story in his collection The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories, which came out in 1976. Originally, Asimov wrote the story to commemorate the United States Bicentennial. It actually started as a part of a bigger project where multiple authors wrote to commemorate the event, but only Asimov created a story for it (after the project fell through). The story takes place over 200 years. In the beginning, a man named Andrew Martin relates the story of his origin as a robot that eventually becomes a being closely resembling a human. Martin lives with multiple generations of the Martin family, gaining more and more sentience and skill as the years go by. As the decades go by, Martin ends up at the forefront of several court cases that allow robots to have more of the same rights as people.
I’ll go on the record and state that this short story blew me away. In my effort to read more classic and Golden Age science fiction stories, of course, Bicentennial Man had to show up on my list. However, at the time I read it, it was one of the first pieces of Asimov that I had encountered. But this story proceeded to introduce me to Asimov’s Laws of Robotics, which absolutely changed how I explored science fiction. And no, I’m not joking. Suddenly, so many things fell into place, and I looked back on other stories I’ve read and thought, “OK, so that’s where these ideas about robots come from.”
Because of this, this quickly became one of those stories I wish I could experience for the first time again. Not to mention that it already had characters I enjoyed. I think some people like to say that Asimov focuses more on sci-fi concepts than prose, but this story felt more character-focused, along with introducing these concepts.
“But that is impossible. It is patently a damaging operation.”
“That does not matter,” said Andrew, calmly. “I must not inflict damage,” said the surgeon. “On a human being, you must not,” said Andrew, “but I, too, am a robot.”
If you want to know anything about Asimov’s Three Laws, then I suggest you get started with this story. This honestly made me want to read the entire Bicentennial Man collection. In the meantime, back to my TBR list of sci-fi and fantasy. Stay tuned for next week’s review!
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