Isaac Asimov - The Positronic Man

"Perhaps you should have asked my son Paul to read the manuscript instead of me," George said. "He's right at the top of his profession, you know. So much more in touch with all these matters of nuance and subtle inference than I am these days."

And Andrew finally understood from that statement that George Charney had not wanted to read his manuscript at all-that George was growing old and weary, that he was entering the final years of his life, that once again the wheel of the generations had turned and that Paul was now the head of the family. Sir had gone and so had Little Miss and soon it was going to be George's turn. Martins and Charneys came and went and yet Andrew remained-not exactly unchanging (for his body was still undergoing occasional technological updating and it also seemed to him that his mental processes were constantly deepening and growing richer as he allowed himself to recognize fully his own extraordinary capabilities), but certainly invulnerable to the ravages of the passing years.

He took his nearly finished manuscript to Paul Charney. Paul read it at once and offered not only praise but, as George had indicated, valuable suggestions for revision. There were places where Andrew's inability to comprehend the abrupt, non-linear jumps of reasoning of which the human mind is capable had led him into certain oversimplifications and unwarranted conclusions. If anything, Paul thought the book was too sympathetic to the human point of view. A little more criticism of the irrational human attitude toward robotics, and toward science in general, might not have been out of place.

Andrew had not expected that.

He said, "But I would not want to offend anyone, Paul."

"No book worth reading has ever been written that didn't manage to offend someone," Paul replied. "Write what you believe to be the truth, Andrew. It would be amazing if everybody in the world agreed with you. But your viewpoint is unique. You have something real and valuable to give the world here. It won't be worth a thing, though, if you suppress what you feel and write only what you think others want to hear."

"But the First Law-"

"Damn the First Law, Andrew! The First Law isn't everything! How can you harm someone with a book? Well, by hitting him over the head with it, I suppose. But not otherwise. Ideas can't do harm-even wrong ideas, even foolish and vicious ideas. People do the harm. They seize hold of certain ideas, sometimes, and use them as the justification for doing unconscionable, outrageous things. Human history is full of examples of that. But the ideas themselves are just ideas. They must never be throttled. They need to be brought forth, inspected, tested, if necessary rejected, right out in the open. -Anyway, the First Law doesn't say anything about robots writing books. Sticks and stones, Andrew-they can do harm. But words-"

"As you yourself have just remarked, Paul, human history is full of harmful events that began simply with words. If those words had never been uttered, the harmful events would not have taken place."

"You don't understand what I'm saying, do you? Or do you? I think you do. You know what power ideas have, and you don't have a lot of faith in the ability of humans to tell a good idea from a bad one. Well, neither do I, sometimes. But in the long run the bad idea will perish. That's been the story of human civilization for thousands of years. The good does prevail, sooner or later, no matter what horrors have happened along the way. And so it's wrong to suppress an idea that may have value to the world. -Look, Andrew: you're probably the closest thing to a human being that has ever come out of the factories of U. S. Robots and Mechanical Men. You're uniquely equipped to tell the world what it needs to know about the human-robot relationship, because in some ways you partake of the nature of each. And so you may help to heal that relationship, which even at this late date is still a very troubled one. Write your book. Write it honestly."

"Yes. I will, Paul."

"Do you have a publisher in mind for it, by the way?"

"A publisher? Why, no. I haven't yet given any thought to-"

"Well, you should. Or let me do it for you. I have a friend in the book business-a client, really-do you mind if I say a word or two to him?"

"That would be quite kind of you," Andrew said.

"Not at all. I want to see this book out there where it can be read by everybody, just as you do."

And indeed within a few weeks Paul had secured a publishing contract for Andrew's book. He assured Andrew that the terms were extremely generous, extremely fair. That was good enough for Andrew. He signed the contract without hesitation.

Over the next year, while he worked on the closing sections of his manuscript, Andrew often thought of the things Paul had said to him that day-about the importance of stating his beliefs honestly, the value that his book could have if he did. And also about his own uniqueness. There was one statement of Paul's that Andrew could not get out of his mind.

Look, Andrew: you're probably the closest thing to a human being that has ever come out of the factories of u. s. Robots and Mechanical Men. You're uniquely equipped to tea the world what it needs to know about the human-robot relationship, because in some ways you partake of the nature of each.

Was it so? Is that what Paul really thought, Andrew wondered, or had it just been the heat of the moment that had led him to say those things?

Andrew asked himself that over and over again, and gradually he began to form an answer.

And then he decided that the time had come to pay another visit to the offices of Feingold and Charney and have another talk with Paul.

He arrived unannounced, but the receptionist greeted him without any inflection of surprise in its voice. Andrew was far from an unfamiliar figure by this time at the Feingold and Charney headquarters.

He waited patiently while the receptionist disappeared into the inner office to notify Paul that Andrew was here. It would surely have been more efficient if the receptionist had used the holographic chatterbox, but unquestionably it was unmanned (or perhaps the word was "unroboted") by having to deal with another robot rather than with a human being.

Eventually the receptionist returned. "Mr. Charney will be with you soon," the receptionist announced, and went back to its tasks without another word.

Andrew passed the time revolving in his mind the matter of his word choice of a few minutes before. Could "unroboted" be used as an analog of "unmanned"? he wondered. Or had "unmanned" become a purely metaphoric term sufficiently divorced from its original literal meaning to be applied to robots-or to women, for that matter?

Many similar semantic problems had cropped up frequently while Andrew was working on his book. Human language, having been invented by humans for the use of humans, was full of little tricky complexities of that sort. The effort that was required in order to cope with them had undoubtedly increased Andrew's own working vocabulary-and, he suspected, the adaptability of his positronic pathways as well.

Occasionally as Andrew sat in the waiting room someone would enter the room and stare at him. He was the free robot, after all-still the only one. The clothes-wearing robot. An anomaly; a freak. But Andrew never tried to avoid the glances of these curiosity-seekers. He met each one calmly, and each in turn looked quickly away.

Paul Charney finally came out. He and Andrew had not seen each other since the winter, at the funeral of Paul's father George, who had died peacefully at the family home and now lay buried on a hillside over the Pacific. Paul looked surprised to see Andrew now, or so Andrew thought-though Andrew still had no real faith in his ability to interpret human facial expressions accurately.