I, Robot

I, Robot
Isaac Asimov

TO JOHN W. CAMPBELL, JR, who godfathered THE ROBOTS The story entitled Robbie was first published as Strange Playfellow in Super Science Stories. Copyright © 1940 by Fictioneers, Inc.; copyright © 1968 by Isaac Asimov. The following stories were originally published in Astounding Science Fiction: Reason, copyright © 1941 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc.; copyright© 1969 by Isaac Asimov. Liar! copyright © 1941 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc.; copyright © 1969 by Isaac Asimov. Runaround, copyright © 1942 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc.; copyright ©1970 by Isaac Asimov. Catch That Rabbit, copyright © 1944 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc. Escape, copyright © 1945 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc. Evidence, copyright © 1946 by Street andSmith Publications, Inc. Little Lost Robot, copyright © 1947 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc. The Evitable Conflict, copyright © 1950 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc.

CONTENTS

Introduction Robbie Runaround Reason Catch That Rabbit Liar! Little Lost Robot Escape! Evidence The Evitable Conflict

Introduction
I LOOKED AT MY NOTES AND I DIDN’T LIKE THEM. I’d spent three days atU. S. Robots and might as well have spent them at home with the Encyclopedia Tellurica. Susan Calvin had been born in the year 1982, they said, which made her seventyfive now. Everyone knew that. Appropriately enough, U. S. Robot and Mechanical Men, Inc. was seventy-five also, since it had been in the year of Dr. Calvin’s birth that Lawrence Robertson had first taken out incorporation papers forwhat eventually became the strangest industrial giant in man’s history. Well, everyone knew that, too. At the age of twenty, Susan Calvin had been part of the particular Psycho-Math seminar at which Dr. Alfred Lanning of U. S. Robots had demonstrated the first mobile robot to be equipped with a voice. It was a large, clumsy unbeautiful robot, smelling of machine-oil and destined for the projectedmines on Mercury. But it could speak and make sense. Susan said nothing at that seminar; took no part in the hectic discussion period that followed. She was a frosty girl, plain and colorless, who protected herself against a world she disliked by a mask-like expression and a hypertrophy of intellect. But as she watched and listened, she felt the stirrings of a cold enthusiasm. She obtained herbachelor’s degree at Columbia in 2003 and began graduate work in cybernetics. All that had been done in the mid-twentieth century on “calculating machines” had been upset by Robertson and his positronic brain-paths. The miles of relays and photocells had given way to the spongy globe of plantinumiridium about the size of a human brain. She learned to calculate the parameters necessary to fix thepossible variables within the “positronic brain”; to construct “brains” on paper such that the responses to given stimuli could be accurately predicted. In 2008, she obtained her Ph.D. and joined United States Robots as a “Robopsychologist,” becoming the first great practitioner of a new science. Lawrence Robertson was still president of the corporation; Alfred Lanning had become director of research.For fifty years, she watched the direction of human progress change and leap ahead. Now she was retiring -- as much as she ever could. At least, she was allowing someone else’s name to be inset upon the door of her office. That, essentially, was what I had. I had a long list of her published papers, of the patents in her name; I had the chronological details of her promotions. In short I had herprofessional “vita” in full detail. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I needed more than that for my feature articles for Interplanetary Press. Much more. I told her so. “Dr. Calvin,” I said, as lushly as possible, “in the mind of the public you and U. S. Robots are identical. Your retirement will end an era and--” “You want the human-interest angle?” She didn’t smile at me. I don’t think she...