Alternate Futures / One Past

I really enjoyed reading The Complete Robot. It is a collection of short stories about different types and complexities of robot. Not what you would expect as a riveting (not intended) read but it is there is a lot of emotion in some of the stories The Bicentennial Man being a prime example of this.

However the majority of the stories are of the “what could happen” variety some are simple like Runaround and some are more complex like Satisfaction Guaranteed these are mainly based on the now famous Three Laws of Robotics and what problems may arise by strict adherence to these laws.

One of the other main themes of the stories tends to be human prejudice towards robots. You could say that this has some thing to do with the Nazi's treatment of the Jews during world war 2 and that Asimov believed that Humans are always prejudiced against some thing they don't understand. But I think that is more my personal opinion based on what I have read about Isaac Asimov and a little reading between the lines.

Some thing that seems a little odd in the stories is that the robots in the stories become more advanced in the way that they think and feel and in their attitudes towards humanity. However the attitudes and language that the humans use in the stories never seems to change. It seems that it may be easier to postulate the future attitudes of robots than that of humans.

To summarise I would say that this book makes you think about the problems of creating a new inelegance. But it also shows you how much our attitudes have changed since these stories were first written.