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"What I have in my stories is ethics. Ethics and morality are very different cups of tea. I adhere to a very strict rigor of personal ethics and I demand it of those around me as well."
- Harlan Ellison
 |
| Prime Command | ||
| A universal order or principle carried out by every robotic device. |
Yes, sometimes what seems like a good idea backfires. The robots are just trying to be nice.
| [But the robots mean well - it's their prime command:]
"It didn't mean anything to you that the robots have practically taken over our whole society — that they've been making us more and more dependent on them all the time?" |
| Technovelgy from Robots Are Nice?,
by Gordon R. Dickson. Published by Galaxy in 1957 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the Noninterference With Other Worlds from In the Deep of Time (1879) by George Parsons Lathrop, the Relations with Extraterrestrial Life from Ogre (1944) by Clifford Simak, the law of contact from Orphans of the Void (1952) by Orville Shaara, the Prime Directive from With Folded Hands (1947) by Jack Williamson, the treatment of extramundane aborigines from Symbiotica (1943) by Eric Frank Russell and alien self-government from Co-Operate or Else (1942) by A.E. van Vogt.
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