Robotic Dog

interior art for "A Boy’s Best Friend"

Last year, I commented on Isaac Asimov's 1985 story called "Hallucination" which featured telepathic aliens. In the March 1975 issue of Boy's Life magazine was "A Boy’s Best Friend", a story about a robotic dog. According to this page, the events depicted in "A Boy’s Best Friend" take place in the year 1995.

Vision. Did Asimov really imagine that families would be living on the Moon in 1995? This seems as silly as a booming commercial cryosleep industry for 1970 as depicted by Robert Heinlein in "A Door Into Summer".

I get it. A science fiction story writer might want to excite readers by hitting them in the face with the depicted arrival of a new technology in the near future.

living on the Moon in 1999

 Ego. Back in June when I was blogging about Arthur C. Clarke, I hinted that some of his "friends" would call him "Ego", apparently because even at a young age he was remarkably intense and very focused on his personal interests. The first time I ever saw Clarke was in the 1960s when he was asked to provide some commentary on the Apollo space program and the next steps for space exploration. In this video clip, Clarke seemed to expect manned orbital telescopes to allow exploration of the solar system, missing the role for robotic (unmanned spacecraft) exploration.

BIG 3

In the early days of science fiction, Asimov and Clarke had a friendly rivalry. One pithy statement attributed to Asimov is "People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." and when commenting on a new idea that someone else came up with, Clarke wrote: "if it really was brilliant I’d have thought of it already".

I don't mind authors who have fun with ideas and who can craft fun and exciting stories for their readers. However, it is very hard to predict future technological progress, so science fiction story tellers face the risk of their works becoming dated. I love the process by which old story ideas are taken up by new story tellers and refreshed for a new audience. 

Image credits.

In that spirit, I've been engaged in writing fan-fiction stories such as The Historical Institute that are inspired by Asimov's old stories about positronic robots.

Ancient Interventions
One of the characters who appears in Chapter 10 of The Historical Institute is Empedocles, who may have had an ego to surpass even those of Clarke and Asimov. I love the idea that some people in Earth's history might have been Interventionists, sent to live among the people of Earth (see Old Time Gaming). 

In other cases, some Earthlings were simply able to use the Bimanoid Interface to obtain information bout the future from either the Hierion Domain or, sometimes, the Sedron Domain.

I had fun imagining that the entire life of Empedocles was changed by the arrival of an Asterothrope on Earth (her name is Synasyup). The Asterothropes are a human variant that was crafted and genetically engineered by positronic robots. 

The Historical Institute takes place in a fictional universe that includes time travel technology as depicted in Asimov's time travel novel, The End of Eternity, but it also includes positronic robots.

Through his interactions with Synasyup, Empedocles became aware of the fact that a few "lucky" humans were able to escape from from Earth and take up a privileged new existence at Observer Base. 

The Asimov Reality Simulator.

When I began imagining a fictionalized story about Empedocles, I was tempted to set the start of my story in the Asimov Reality. I imagined that the analogue of Empedocles might "escape" from the Asimov Reality and takes up residence at the Writers Block. As a resident of Observer Base, Empedocles was able to get himself converted into an immortal femtobot replicoid. In the fullness of Time, the replicoid copy of Empedocles was transferred over into the next Reality, the Ekcolir Reality. 

Making use of the Bimanoid Interface, the copy of Empedocles from the Asimov Reality passed along information to his analogue in the Ekcolir Reality, but for many centuries after that he continued to "work" at the Writers Block and eventually takes a particular interest in the writing career of Arabella Clarke. In the Ekcolir Reality, Empedocles passes information about the Fru'wu to Miss Clarke.

Arthur C. Clarke

In the Buld Reality, Grean assigns Empedocles the task of making sure that Arthur Clarke does not inform Earthlings about the arrival of a Buld spaceship on Earth. The efforts of Empedocles led to the development of a United Nations space program called Spaceguard. Clarke was asked to become the first director of Spaceguard. Later, when the Spaceguard radar system detects the arrival of the Buld spaceship, Empedocles was able to take control of Clarke's mind and prevent disclosure of the alien spaceship's existence. Based on his experience, Clarke wrote a fictionalized account of the Buld spaceship's visit to Earth that was published as a short story under the name The Brahmán Transmigration. In the Final Reality, Clarke instead wrote Rendezvous with Rama.

in the Buld Reality

 Something New
With all that background for Empedocles (described above) in mind, I began imagining a new science fiction story called Nothing New. In this story (set in the Final Reality), the Editor is taken into the future by Grean and given the chance to read copies of both The Brahmán Transmigration and a story that the Editor's analogue wrote in the Buld Reality. That "lost" story was a fantasy tale called Nothing New.

The only surviving account of the events "Nothing New" were to come from a story written by Cecilie Vedra. Cecilie's story (titled "The Pausanias Observation") was found in the archives of the Writers Block. Part 1 of "Nothing New" was to start with Manny trying to deal with a small problem in ancient Sicily...

Part 1 of "Nothing New"

The scene with Manny waiting at the dock in Catăna for the arrival of her agent, 'Mr. Smith', became Chapter 10 of The Historical Archive. I've previously written science fiction stories about Mary Shelley and I was not really interested in going down the same path with Empedocles.

Heading in a new direction, I started imagining that R. Nyrtia might need to step in and "put a patch on" the events depicted in "Nothing New".

image source

The more I thought about R. Nyrtia, the more I realized that it was time to investigate the origins of Nyrtia. For stories set in the Exode Saga, I always explicitly concern myself with the information sources that are available to the Editor. I began imagining a wealth of information about Nyrtia and the First Reality that might be found in The Historical Archive.

What is the Historical Archive? I hope readers will learn the answer to that question by reading the story.

In The Historical Archive, the Editor suspects that both he and his pet cats are being artificially controlled by Nyrtia.

The less personal and more general question concerns the human species and our relationship with folks like Nyrtia, Grean and Manny who have access to advanced technologies. The Editor can't help wondering if Nyrtia wants to attain god-like powers. Does she think of humans like pets?

image source

While writing my own stories about positronic robots, I am continuing my project of trying to read old science fiction stories that might have inspired Asimov's interest in robots. Also, I've been reading old positronic robot stories that I've never previously read, such as "A Boy’s Best Friend", mentioned at the top of this blog post.

Two such old Asimov stories about robots are "Robot AL-76 Goes Astray", (which is one of Asimov's stories that begins with a glitch in the usual routine operations of U.S. Robot and Mechanical Men Corporation) and "Lenny", about a robot that can learn (1958). "Robot AL-76 Goes Astray" seems like a technofantasy, not science fiction. The story "Lenny" is more interesting because it raises the question: should positronic robots be designed with rigid programming for just one specific job or might it be a good idea to have more flexible robots who can learn new tasks while out in the field?

R. Nyrtia turns 20

In "Lenny", robot LNE is accidentally manufactured with the mind of a baby. Rather than rolling off the assembly line with full pre-programmed knowledge of how to mine boron on asteroids, Lenny must learn to speak. The robot eventually learns to call Dr. Calvin 'mommy'. 

For The Historical Institute, I imagine that R. Nyrtia was built and sent out into the world in the body of a baby. She grew up with siblings as a member of a human family. Each year, Nyrtia's developing positronic brain was transferred to a new, larger body.  Why bother? As told on The Historical Archive, allowing for flexibility in positronic brains was required for the invention of time travel technology.

Next: infinity science fiction.

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