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Page 55
banned, nor are other non-humanoid robots. The banning of the robots and apprehension concerning them, however, provides many conflicts in a series that has little inevitable conflict built into it. Asimov is able to get around the bans when he desires, particularly in the robot stories published after 1950.
More important are the philosophic implications of the Three Laws. In "Runaround," for instance, Speedy is in the position of a human who has been ordered to perform an important task but who discovers that doing it will endanger his life. A human might not exhibit his conflict in a fashion so cleverly balanced between a command that must be obeyed and a danger that must be avoided, but the circle he inscribes around the selenium pool shows an understanding of human nature that a soldier cowering in a shell hole might not. Cutie has the characteristics of many prophets, finding his certitude in Platonic introspection rather than scientific evidence; and his analysis suggests to the reader, in passing, how improbable are the universe and the life itself that we take for granted. By the time Asimov reached the writing of "Evidence," the comparisons between robots and humans had become overt.
Susan Calvin points out:
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". . . if you stop to think about it, the three Rules of Robotics are the essential guiding principles of a good many of the world's ethical systems. Of course, every human being is supposed to have the instinct of self-preservation. That's Rule Three to a robot. Also every good human being, with a social conscience and a sense of responsibility, is supposed to defer to proper authority; to listen to his doctor, his boss, his government, his psychiatrist, his fellow man; to obey laws, to follow rules, to conform to custom even when they interfere with his comfort or his safety. That's Rule Two to a robot. Also, every good human being is supposed to love others as himself, protect his fellow man, risk his life to save another. That's Rule One to a robot. To put it simply if Byerley follows all the Rules of Robotics, he may be a robot, and may simply be a very good man."
Clearly, as she herself states in the same story, Susan Calvin likes robots considerably better than human beings. By the end of the book, so may the reader.
The story of the robots does not end here. Asimov continued his exploration of the theme with three stories published in magazines other than Astounding in the 1940-50 period, and almost two dozen more scattered over the following 40 years, some of them casual notions, others better than most if not all the stories in I, Robot. The first group of eight was published in The Rest of the Robots in 1964.
"Robot AL-76 Goes Astray," Amazing, February 1942, presents a

 
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