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"In my mind I have gone all over the universe, which may make it less important for me to make piddling little trips... I did enjoy seeing Stonehenge. It looked exactly the way I thought it would look."
- Isaac Asimov
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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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'He was in a high-ceilinged windowless cell with walls of glittering white porcelain.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors...'
'The robant and the tiny old woman entered the control room slowly...'
'Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs... What are the odds?'
'It is as you thought when you constructed the time crystal, my master Vaylan.'
'This was their world, their planet — this swift-traveling, yet seemingly moveless vessel.'
