Oh... and now for something completely different...
This is a good read, especially if you have read Asimov voraciously. There was a period in my life when I chased down virtually every science fiction story that Asimov had ever written... I also used to buy the Science Fiction magazine Asimov's; since he always wrote the editorial.
I had a standing order at the CNA at Musgrave Center. Once a month I would rush to the CNA to get my copy. It was, and still is, one of the sources of high quality literary science fiction. But now there seems to be an online science fiction zine making available high quality literary science fiction to the needy.
I used to keep it on my bed side table. And every night before I went to sleep I would read a story. I had to be very sparing; as it had to last me until the next month's issue. A truly well written science fiction short story can make you re-imagine the world you live in, by seeing it from the perspective of... umm.. I am babbling. Anyways,... At the moment I have a text-book on distributed object-oriented middleware lying next to my bed. So I guess I shifted from science fiction to science non-fiction as my bedtime reading.
As I was saying, this wonderfully written short story suddenly made me revisit the world Asimov created. A world I lived in when a young teen-ager. It also made me realise how little I had truly thought about his famous three laws of robotics critically. Cory's story quite effectively and beautifully exposes what Asimov never fully confronted i.e. what kind of goverment control must neccessarily exist in order to create and enforce the infamous 3 laws of robotics. Now, in retrospect, I feel remarkably naive for not seeing what Cory makes obvious.
Go, Cory, Go.
1 comment:
thanks - i'll print that out and read it tongiht. btw, do you see strange spikes in your visitor activity? many days i see only visits by you, shosh and a couple of other friends. but today, i suddenly suddenly suddenly see 11 new visitors to the blog - already. i don't understand how it happens. they don't seem to be coming from a particular place either. i wonder if its because i wrote a post on global warming and somehow blogger has an non-random system for forwarding people who click the 'next blog' button?
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