We, Robots Read online

  WE,

  ROBOTS

  WE,

  ROBOTS

  ARTIFICIAL

  INTELLIGENCE

  IN 100 STORIES

  EDITED BY SIMON INGS

  AN AD ASTRA BOOK

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in 2020 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  An Ad Astra Book

  Copyright in the compilation and introductory material © Simon Ings, 2020

  The moral right of Simon Ings to be identified as the editor of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  The moral right of the contributing authors of this anthology to be identified as such is asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  The list of individual titles and respective copyrights on page 1003 constitutes an extension of this copyright page.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is an anthology of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in each story are either products of each author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  All excerpts have been reproduced according to the styles found in the original works. As a result, some spellings and accents used can vary throughout this anthology.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB) 9781789540918

  ISBN (E) 9781789540925

  Introduction and part opener artwork courtesy of Shutterstock

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

  for Leo,

  my favourite steam-driven boy

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Epigraph

  Section One

  It’s Alive!

  Chayim Bloch

  The Golem Runs Amuck

  Vina Jie-Min Prasad

  Fandom for Robots

  Ambrose Bierce

  Moxon’s Master

  H. G. Wells

  The Land Ironclads

  Emile Goudeau

  The Revolt of the Machines

  Theodore Sturgeon

  Microcosmic God

  Michael Swanwick

  Ancient Engines

  Mike Resnick

  Beachcomber

  Stanisław Lem

  Non Serviam

  Adam Roberts

  Adam Robots

  James Blish

  Solar Plexus

  Walter M. Miller, Jr.

  I Made You

  Herman Melville

  The Bell Tower

  Algis Budrys

  First to Serve

  Peter Watts

  Malak

  Arundhati Hazra

  The Toymaker’s Daughter

  Section Two

  Following the Money

  Stephen Vincent Benét

  Nightmare Number Three

  Jack Williamson

  With Folded Hands

  Charles Dickens

  Full Report of the Second Meeting of the Mudfog Association for the Advancement of Everything Section B – Display of Models and Mechanical Science

  Dan Grace

  Fully Automated Nostalgia Capitalism

  Frederic Perkins

  The Man-Ufactory

  Romie Stott

  A Robot Walks into a Bar

  Guy Endore

  Men of Iron

  Fritz Leiber

  A Bad Day for Sales

  Rachael K. Jones

  The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant

  Morris Bishop

  The Reading Machine

  Juan Jose Arreola

  Baby H.P.

  John Sladek

  The Steam-Driven Boy

  Robert Bloch

  Comfort Me, My Robot

  Murray Leinster

  A Logic Named Joe

  Paolo Bacigalupi

  Mika Model

  Nick Wolven

  Caspar D. Luckinbill, What Are You Going to Do?

  Robert Reed

  The Next Scene

  Section Three

  Overseer and Servant

  Bruce Boston

  Old Robots are the Worst

  Herbert Goldstone

  Virtuoso

  Alexander Weinstein

  Saying Goodbye to Yang

  Tania Hershman

  The Perfect Egg

  Ken Liu

  The Caretaker

  Becky Hagenston

  Hi Ho Cherry-O

  Helena Bell

  Robot

  Lauren Fox

  Rosie Cleans House

  Brian Aldiss

  Super-Toys Last All Summer Long

  Adam Marek

  Tamagotchi

  Ray Bradbury

  The Veldt

  V. E. Thiessen

  There Will Be School Tomorrow

  W. T. Haggert

  Lex

  Lester Del Rey

  Helen O’Loy

  T. S. Bazelli

  The Peacemaker

  Sandra McDonald

  Sexy Robot Mom

  Clifford D. Simak

  I Am Crying All Inside

  Section Four

  Changing Places

  GPT-2

  Transformer

  Paul McAuley

  The Man

  Steven Popkes

  The Birds of Isla Mujeres

  Patrick O’Leary

  That Laugh

  Tobias S. Buckell

  Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance

  John Kaiine

  Dolly Sodom

  Robert Sheckley

  The Robot Who Looked Like Me

  Shinichi Hoshi

  Miss Bokko (Bokko-Chan)

  Jerome K. Jerome

  The Dancing Partner

  Nicholas Sheppard

  Satisfaction

  Ian McDonald

  Nanonauts! In Battle With Tiny Death-Subs!

  Rich Larson

  Masked

  Chris Beckett

  The Turing Test

  Bernard Wolfe

  Self Portrait

  Bruce Sterling

  Maneki Neko

  Harlan Ellison

  Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman

  E. M. Forster

  The Machine Stops

  Section Five

  All Hail The New Flesh

  Carl Sandburg

  The Hammer

  Liz Jensen

  Good to Go

  Rachel Swirsky

  Tender

  Damon Knight

  Masks

  Tendai Huchu

  Hostbods

  Cordwainer Smith

  Scanners Live in Vain

  E. Lily Yu

  Musée de l’me Seule

  William Gibson

  The Winter Market

  Ted Kosmatka

  The One Who Isn’t

  M. John Harrison

  Suicide Coast

  Mari Ness

  Memories and Wire

  Nalo Hopkinson

  Ganger (Ball Lightning)

  Greg Egan

  Learning to Be Me

  C. L. Moore

  No Woman Born

  Joanna Kavenna

  Flight

  Karen Joy Fowler

  Praxis

  Xia Jia

>   Tongtong’s Summer

  Ted Hayden

  These 5 Books Go 6 Feet Deep

  Section Six

  Succession

  Samuel Butler

  Darwin Among the Machines

  Miguel de Unamuno

  Mechanopolis

  Terry Edge

  Big Dave’s in Love

  Cory Doctorow

  I, Row-Boat

  A. E. van Vogt

  Fulfillment

  Barry N. Malzberg

  Making the Connections

  Brian Trent

  Director X and the Thrilling Wonders of Outer Space

  John Cooper Hamilton

  The Next Move

  Nathan Hillstrom

  Like You, I Am A System

  Marissa Lingen

  My Favourite Sentience

  Howard Waldrop

  London, Paris, Banana

  Peter Philips

  Lost Memory

  George Zebrowski

  Starcrossed

  Tad Williams

  The Narrow Road

  Avram Davidson

  The Golem

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgements

  Extended Copyright

  About the Author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  INTRODUCTION

  It appeared near the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday 9 December 1868. It looked for all the world like a railway signal: a revolving gas-powered lantern with a red and a green light at the end of a swivelling wooden arm.

  Its purposes seemed benign, and we obeyed its instructions willingly. Why wouldn’t we? The motor car had yet to arrive, but horses, pound for pound, are way worse on the streets, and accidents were killing over a thousand people a year in the capital alone. We were only too welcoming of of anything that promised to save lives.

  A month later the thing (whatever it was) exploded, tearing the face off a nearby policeman.

  We hesitated. We asked ourselves whether this thing (whatever it was) was a good thing, after all. But we came round. We invented excuses, and blamed a leaking gas main for the accident. We made allowances and various design improvements were suggested. And in the end we decided that the thing (whatever it was) could stay.

  We learned to give it space to operate. We learned to leave it alone. In Chicago, in 1910, it grew self-sufficient, so there was no need for a policeman to operate it. Two years later, in Salt Lake City, Utah, a detective (called – no kidding – Lester Wire) connected it to the electricity grid.

  It went by various names, acquiring character and identity as its empire expanded. By the time its brethren arrived In Los Angeles, looming over Fifth Avenue’s crossings on elegant gilded columns, each surmounted by a statuette, ringing bells and waving stubby semaphore arms, people had taken to calling them robots.

  The name never quite stuck, perhaps because their days of ostentation were already passing. Even as they became ubiquitous, they were growing smaller and simpler, making us forget what they really were (the unacknowledged legislators of our every movement). Everyone, in the end, ended up calling them traffic lights.

  (Almost everyone. In South Africa, for some obscure geopolitical reason, the name robot stuck, The signs are everywhere: Robot Ahead 250m. You have been warned.)

  In Kinshasa, meanwhile, nearly three thousand kilometres to the north, robots have arrived to direct the traffic in what has been, for the longest while, one of the last redoubts of unaccommodated human muddle.

  Not traffic lights: robots. Behold their bright silver robot bodies, shining in the sun, their swivelling chests, their long, dexterous arms and large round camera-enabled eyes!

  Some government critics complain that these literal traffic robots are an expensive distraction from the real business of traffic control in Congo’s capital.

  These people have no idea – none – what is coming.

  *

  To ready us for the inevitable, here are a hundred of the best short stories ever written about robots and artificial minds. Read them while you can, learn from them, and make your preparations, in that narrowing sliver of time left to you between updating your Facebook page and liking your friends’ posts on Instagram, between Netflix binges and Spotify dives. (In case you hadn’t noticed (and you’re not supposed to notice) the robots are well on their way to ultimate victory, their land sortie of 1868 having, two and a half centuries later, become a psychic rout.)

  There are many surprises in store in these pages; at the same time, there are some disconcerting omissions. I’ve been very sparing in my choice of very long short stories. (Books fall apart above a certain length, so inserting novellas in one place would inevitably mean stuffing the collection with squibs and drabbles elsewhere. Let’s not play that game.) I’ve avoided stories whose robots might just as easily be guard dogs, relatives, detectives, children, or what-have-you. (Of course, robots who explore such roles – excel at them, make a mess of them, or change them forever – are here in numbers.) And the writers I feature appear only once, so anyone expecting some sort of celebrity bitch-slap here between Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick will simply have to sit on their hands and behave. Indeed, Dick and Asimov do not appear at all in this collection, for the very good reason that you’ve read them many times already (and if you haven’t, where have you been?).

  I’ve stuck to the short story form. There’s no Frankenstein here, and no Tik-Tok. They were too big to fit through the door, to which a sign is appended to the effect that I don’t perform extractions. Jerome K. Jerome’s all-too-memorable dance class and Charles Dickens’s prescient send-up of theme parks – self-contained narratives first published in digest form – are as close as I’ve come to plucking juicy plums from bigger puddings.

  This collection contains the most diverse collection of robots I could find. Anthropomorphic robots, invertebrate AIs, thuggish metal lumps and wisps of manufactured intelligence so delicate, if you blinked you might miss them. The literature of robots and artificial intelligence is wildly diverse, in both tone and intent, so to save the reader from whiplash, I’ve split my 100 stories into six short thematic collections.

  It’s Alive! is about inventors and their creations.

  Following the Money drops robots into the day-to-day business of living.

  Owners and Servants considers the human potentials and pitfalls of owning and maintaining robots.

  Changing Places looks at what happens at the blurred interface between human and machine minds.

  All Hail The New Flesh waves goodbye to the physical boundaries that once separated machines from their human creators.

  Succession considers the future of human and machine consciousnesses – in so far as they have one.

  *

  What’s extraordinary, in this collection of 100 stories, are not the lucky guesses (even a stopped clock is right twice a day), nor even the deep human insights that are scattered about the place (though heaven knows we could never have too many of them). It’s how wrong these stories are. All of them. Even the most prescient. Even the most attuned. Robots are nothing like what we expected them to be. They are far more helpful, far more everywhere, far more deadly, than we ever dreamed.

  They were meant to be a little bit like us: artificial servants – humanoid, in the main – able and willing to tackle the brute physical demands of our world so we wouldn’t have to. But dealing with physical reality turned out to be a lot harder than it looked, and robots are lousy at it.

  Rather than dealing with the world, it turned out easier for us to change the world. Why buy a robot that cuts the grass (especially if cutting grass is all it does) when you can just lay down plastic grass? Why build an expensive robot that can keep your fridge stocked and chauffeur your car (and, by the way, we’re still nowhere near to building such a machine) when you can buy a fridge that reads barcodes to keep the milk topped up, while you swan about town in an Uber?

  That fridge, keeping you in milk long after y
ou’ve given up dairy; the hapless taxi driver who arrives the wrong side of a six-lane highway; the airport gate that won’t let you into your own country because you’re wearing new spectacles: these days, we notice robots only when they go wrong. We were expecting friends, companions, or at any rate pets. At the very least, we thought we were going to get devices. What we got was infrastructure.

  And that is why robots – real robots – are boring. They vanish into the weft of things. Those traffic lights, who were their emissaries, are themselves disappearing. Kinshasa’s robots wave their arms, not in victory, but in farewell. They’re leaving their ungalvanized steel flesh behind. They’re rusting down to code. Their digital ghosts will steer the paths of driverless cars.

  The robots of our earliest imaginings have been superseded by a sort of generalised magic that turns the unreasonable and incomprehensible realm of physical reality into something resembling Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. Bit by bit, we are replacing the real world, which makes no sense at all – with a virtual world in which everything stitches with paranoid neatness to everything else.