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Page 46
which they had published just six months before (and the editor must have had Binder's "The Trial of Adam Link" already in type for the July issue). Pohl himself published "Robbie" in Super Science Stories.
"Robbie" set up many of the conflicts that later pervaded I, Robot and even the entire series of robot stories. In the story, the Westons have bought Robbie as a nursemaid for their daughter Gloria because, as her mother says, "It was a novelty; it took a load off me, and and it was a fashionable thing to do." Two years later, however, Mrs. Weston wanted to sell the robot back to the company. "She [Gloria] won't play with anyone else"; "I won't have my daughter entrusted to a machine and I don't care how clever it is. It has no soul, and no one knows what it may be thinking. A child just isn't made to be guarded by a thing of metal''; "and . . . something might go wrong. . . . Some little jigger will come loose and the awful thing will go berserk. . . ." George Weston protests: "A robot is infinitely more to be trusted than a human nursemaid. . . . Robbie was constructed for only one purpose really to be the companion of a little child. His entire `mentality' has been created for the purpose. He just can't help being faithful and loving and kind. He's a machine made so. That's more than you can say for humans." Nevertheless, George surrenders to his wife's persistence, only to reunite the inconsolable Gloria with Robbie at the end.
Other problems besides unreasoning opposition to robots run through the robot series: 1) human resentment of robots (Asimov calls it "the Frankenstein complex") and the difficulties of introducing robots on Earth; 2) determining what is good for people; 3) the difficulties of giving a robot unambiguous instructions; 4) the distinctions among robots and between robots and people and the difficulties in telling robots and people apart; 5) the superiority of robots to people; and also 6) the superiority of people to robots.
Asimov rearranged the order of the stories when they were published in I, Robot. He also made some small editorial changes for consistency. "Reason," for instance, was placed third in the book although it was written and published second, before the codification of the Three Laws.
Pleased by the appearance of "Strange Playfellow" ("Robbie") in print, Asimov decided to "press Campbell's buttons" by using a religious motif in a robot story. Campbell responded as Asimov had hoped, asking Asimov to write the story for him and buying it immediately. It was the first Asimov robot story to appear in Astounding. "Reason" incorporated two of Campbell's editorial preferences: a philosophic concern with religion Cutie deduces by "pure reason" that he could not have been constructed by such inferior beings as Donovan and

 
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