and useful except when something went wrong, and then as capable of correction and improvement. Other writers did not quote the Three Laws-they tended to be reserved for me-but they assumed them, and so did the readers.
Astonishingly enough, my robot stories also had an important effect on the world outside.
It is well known that the early rocket-experimenters were strongly influenced by the science fiction stories of H. a. Wells. In the same way, early robot-experimenters were strongly influenced by my robot stories, nine of which were collected in 1950 to make up a book called I, Robot. It was my second published book and it has remained in print in the four decades since.
Joseph F. Engelberger, studying at Columbia University in the 1950s, came across I, Robot and was sufficiently attracted by what he read to determine that he was going to devote his life to robots. About that time, he met George C. Devol, Jr., at a cocktail party. Devol was an inventor who was also interested in robots.
Together, they founded the firm of Unimation and set about working out schemes for making robots work. They patented many devices, and by the mid-1970s, they had worked out all kinds of practical robots. The trouble was that they needed computers that were compact and cheap-but once the microchip came in, they had it. From that moment on, Unimation became the foremost robot firm in the world and Engelberger grew rich beyond anything he could have dreamed of.
He has always been kind enough to give me much of the credit. I have met other roboticists such as Marvin Minsky and Shimon Y. Nof, who also admitted, cheerfully, the value of their early reading of my robot stories. Nof, who is an Israeli, had first read I, Robot in a Hebrew translation.
The roboticists take the Three Laws of Robotics seriously and they keep them as an ideal for robot safety. As yet, the types of industrial robots in use are so simple, essentially, that safety devices have to be built in externally. However, robots may confidently be expected to grow more versatile and capable and the Three Laws, or their equivalent, will surely be built in to their programming eventually.
I myself have never actually worked with robots, never even as much as seen one, but I have never stopped thinking about them. I have to date written at least thirty-five short stories and five novels that involve robots, and I dare say that if I am spared, I will write more.
My robot stories and novels seem to have become classics in their own right and, with the advent of the "Robot City" series of novels, have become the wider literary universe of other writers as well. Under those circumstances, it might be useful to go over my robot stories and describe some of those which I think are particularly significant and to explain why I think they are.
1. "Robbie:" This is the first robot story I wrote. I turned it out between May 10 and May 22 of 1939, when I was nineteen years old and was just about to graduate from college. I had a little trouble placing it, for John Campbell rejected it and so did Amazing Stories. However, Fred Pohl accepted it on March 25, 1940, and it appeared in the September 1940 issue of Super Science Stories, which he edited. Fred Pohl, being Fred Pohl, changed the title to "Strange Playfellow," but I changed it back when I included it in my book I, Robot and it has appeared as "Robbie" in every subsequent incarnation.
Aside from being my first robot story, "Robbie" is significant because in it, George Weston says to his wife in defense of a robot that is fulfilling the role of nursemaid, "He just can't help being faithful and loving and kind. He's a machine-made so." This is the first indication, in my first story, of what eventually became the "First Law of Robotics," and of the basic fact that robots were made with built-in safety rules.
2. "Reason:" "Robbie" would have meant nothing in itself if I had written no more robot stories, particularly since it appeared in one of the minor magazines. However, I wrote a second robot story, "Reason," and that one John Campbell liked. After a bit of revision, it appeared in the April 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, and there it attracted notice. Readers became aware that there was such a thing as the "positronic robots," and so did Campbell.