Where have I been lately? A number of factors have resulted in me not posting since December. One of which was that over the past few months I’ve been chipping away at The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke. At just shy of 1,000 pages, it has been my lunch time reading for a while now. There are a couple short stories that I plan on reviewing, as soon as I can remember to bring the book home from work. I’ve also been filling most of my free time, 177 hours now, with playing Battlefield 3 (my stats).
I’ve watched a few movies, but I didn’t get around to reviewing those. One was Gamer, which I didn’t expect much from. The other was Battle: Los Angeles, a cookie cutter “aliens attack, let’s fight back” movie. I didn’t really “watch” these as much as listened to them as I cleaned out my office. After going through my recent posts, I noticed that I never reviewed 28 Weeks Later. This was actually one of the sequels I’ve seen that I liked more than the original. I might have to re-watch, then write up a review. I watched a decent movie last night though, The Adjustment Bureau, which I plan on reviewing in the next few days, if not tonight. My goal for myself is to have it done before the end of the month. Thank goodness for leap years!
OK, enough excuses. Thanks to all of you that still have me in your newsreader. I’ll try to be better about posting updates in the future.
The book left me thinking more about philosophy that the actual story. I suppose that is a good thing. In Asimov’s forward, he brings up the biblical story of the Good Samaritan. In this story, Jesus answers the question, “Who is my neighbor?” The moral of the story is that love and mercy should extend to all people (humans). History in our century shows that we as a society do not treat each other as neighbors. In this fictional future, this does not change much. The central theme of this book is three robots attempting to answer the question, “What is human?” so that the robots would know who they should serve and protect. Further, the programming that only biological humans are important enough to protect is questioned. Wolruf, a wolf-like alien, and the sentient bird-like aliens are included in the programming as ‘human’ so the robots would protect them. The robots had a hard time believing that under the definition that humans are the highest form of being that Derec, Ariel, and Avery were human. I really enjoyed the development of the Robots’ search for the truth.
The line that I will remember most is the answer a philosopher robot gives to the question, “What is a human?” It answers, “That depends on your point of view.” Our society can definitely relate to this…since some groups categorize other groups as sub-human based on race, gender, accent, and dare I say immigrations status.
I am beginning to question why, in this story, robots are only directed to protect humans and not all life…
The Three Laws of Robotics were developed initially to safeguard humans against robots. If I remember correctly, programmers also wanted to ensure that robots were loyal to the humans in case they encountered aliens. In Asimov’s “Robot and Foundation Universe” humans mainly worried about protecting themselves, not respecting all forms of life. They thought that humans were at the top of the food chain and should stay that way.
The Robot City/Aliens books was the first time Asimov allowed other authors to write using the Three Laws of Robotics. He challenged them to approach his work from a fresh angle. It’s been a while since I’ve read these, but from what I remember, these new authors did a pretty good job.