The Positronic Man Stirs My Summer Brain to Life

Has this thing gone OP? Because if it has, the world is missing out. I did a search for a cover image, and I can't find very many. This leads me to believe the book is out-of-print. Noooooo. Good book.

Since I enjoyed Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series so much, I decided I might dip my toe a little further into the world of sci-fi to see what I could find. Enter Isaac Asimov. I am interested in the Foundation series, but my little library seems to have every book in that collection except the FIRST ONE. Ahem. So I looked at other choices. The Positronic Man interested me because I like Data from Star Trek. (Yes. Geek. I know.) Since Asimov is famous for creating the 3 Laws of Robotics, I knew it would be fascinating.

It's giving me little spirals of thought as I read. Such as what this passage led me to think about regarding perfection:

"The new robots aren't nearly as good as you are, Andrew," he said. "The new ones are contemptibly simple-minded creatures, as a matter of fact. The company has always succeeded in learning how to make the pathways more precise, more closely on the nose, more deeply on the track, but that is a double-edged kind of improvement. The new robots don't shift. They have no mental agility. There's nothing in the least unpredictable about them. They simply do what they're designed to do and never a smidgeon more. I like you better, Andrew."

"Thank you, Sir."

"Of course, the company will tell you that their current generation of robots is 99.9% efficient, or maybe they're claiming 100% efficiency this year. Well, good for them. But a robot like you, Andrew--you're 102% efficient; 110% maybe. That isn't what they want at U.S. Robots. They're after perfection, and I suppose they've attained it--their idea of perfection anyway. The perfect servant. The flawlessly functioning mechanical man. But perfection can be a terrible limitation, Andrew. Don't you agree? What it leads to is a kind of soulless automaton that has no ability to transcend its builders' predetermined notions of its limitations. Not at all like you, Andrew. You aren't soulless, that's obvious to us all by now."

Damn.

Isn't that interesting??

For so many reasons:

1. Just the thought of a man having an intelligent conversation with a robot is cool.
2. There is only one of Andrew, so he is 100% unique.
3. The idea of perfection is usually a goal for most of my peers and society in general. Perfect life, perfect home, perfect job. But what if perfection would make us soulless automatons? I believe it would. How 100% boring.
4. The notion of being limited by your creator's predetermined notions of you is also quite juicy. Don't we often make choices in life based on what our parents do or do not want for us? Don't we ALL struggle to break free from the images that others have in their minds of what we were, are, or will become? This problem is not limited to Andrew after all, but to the human race in general. How do we overcome our predetermined destinies bestowed upon us by our original family units? Oof.
5. Could a machine REALLY have a soul? I suppose it could. If it could learn and respond and grow. Andrew is very interesting, indeed. I'm really enjoying his story. But if he's left in the hands of humans, I can only imagine it will become... complicated. Scary. Sad? I'm only halfway through. We'll have to see what awaits our positronic friend.

So yeah. There's waaaaay more. But I won't quote anything else because I'm going to have to insist that Pa read it, and I don't want to ruin it for him. So if you're looking for some light summer reading mixed with some heavy existential thought, go find this book. Although it might be OP so you'll have to get it from the library. Sigh.