Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988) was born on this date, August 3. He is one of my favorite writers. I was planning on reading one of his stories, but I’ve been busy with other things. So I’m going to offer some reflections on one of the things he wrote about a lot.

Robots.

Robots are a trope that was once almost ubiquitous in science fiction. You don’t see them much anymore. At least I haven’t seen any new stories about them. To be fair, though, I’ve not read much science fiction in the last few years. I’ve mostly been reading mysteries and thrillers.

Anyone who has read robot stories (I’m thinking primarily short fiction here), please drop a line in the comments.

When science fiction readers think of robots these days, they usually think of one or both of two things. Droids from Star Wars. Asimov’s robots. We’ll save the droids for another post. I want to focus on robots in fiction, not robots in cinema.

Let me state first of all that I really like Asimov’s robots. He did groundbreaking work in the stories that eventually became I, Robot and the later books. He set the standard that most other robots stories are judged by.

But robots aren’t limited to positronic brains and the Three Laws. Nor should they be.

Simak took a different approach. His robots had fewer contraints. Take “All the Traps of Earth”, for instance. It’s the tale of a robot on the run. Why is he running? Because his owner has died, and he doesn’t want to be destroyed. So he takes off.

As I said, Simak’s robots have more autonomy than Asimov’s. They can do harm. Sometimes intentionally. Sometimes not. Soemtimes the robots serve man longer than man lives. The robot Jenkins in City is faithful to the family he serves until humanity is extinct.  Asimov did something similar when he tied the robots stories, the R. Daneel Olivaw mysteries, and the Foundation universe together near the end of his career.

I think Simak did it better. He certainly did it first, and with a lot fewer words.

Those are just two examples of Simak’s treatment of robots. Simak is fading from the reading public’s memory now. He should be remembrered. He wasn’t as high profile as some other writers, but he was just as good, and in many cases, he was better.