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"At its best, SF is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we can't predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe."
- John Brunner
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| Compassion Circuit | ||
| A special robotic component that allows the robot to weigh harm and benefit in carrying out commands. |
The events of this short story are placed not too far ahead in our own future, where domestic robots are the norm; practically everyone has a household robot.
Janet, though, didn't like them; however, an illness forced her to accept the idea of a robot in the house, one with a new feature.
Doctor-recommended, of course.
| "...what I'd really recommend for her is the type they have here. It's something pretty new, this Nurse James model. A specially developed high sensibility job with a quite novel contra-balanced compassion-protection circuit. A very tricky bit of work, that.
Any direct order which a normal robot would obey at once is evaluated by the circuit, weighed against the benefit or harm to the patient, and unless it is beneficial, or at least harmless, it is not obeyed..." |
| Technovelgy from Compassion Circuit,
by John Wyndham. Published by Fantastic Universe in 1954 Additional resources -
|
SF readers will recognize in the compassion-circuit some measure of the Three Laws of Robotics introduced by writer Isaac Asimov in his 1942 story Runaround.
See also the robot emotions from Lester del Rey's 1938 story Helen O'Loy.
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'...the rocket’s landing-arms automatically unfolded.'
'...points and patches of light... sliding all over their faces in a programmed manner that had been designed to foil facial recognition systems.'
'...the combined Wind-Suncatcher, like a spray of tulips mounted fanwise.'
'I went to the control room where the three other men were manipulating their mechanical men.'
'The low-slung monorail car, straddling its single track, bored through the shadows on a slowly rising course.'
'It was a smooth ovoid floating a few inches from the floor...'
'... he thrust in his charging arm to replenish his store of energy.'
'...the terrible Jovian gravity that made each movement an effort.'
