March 6, 2017

It is a fiction about a robot gaining consciousness.  [see Professor Rodgers’ handout: “Writing About Texts”]

“Reason” by Isaac Asimov is a short story.  It is about …

There are these two engineers who are living inside a ship and they need to keep the reactor going.  They get a new robot and they put it together and it is like an advanced robot.  HOw do they put it?  The robot’s name is QT, also called “Cutie.”  So they tell QT that they made him and his purpose is to serve them, but QT does not believe it.  So QT goes off and develops his own story about how he was created, which is the reactor, i.e., the Master created him, to serve the master and the humans in there are inferior and they need to go and now he is in charge and blah, blah, blah.  

This story is about a robot gaining consciousness and achieving his beliefs.  Setting: space station?  Year?: 2058 A.D. Main characters: Mike Donovan, Gregory Powell, QT-1, The Master, other robots, Franz Muller, Sam Evans

The story is about engineers and a new robot.  QT thinks he is smarter than the engineers.  QT makes all of the robots follow him.  He does not believe that beings and planets are

The story is about two engineers that constructed a robot whose logic contradicts the logic of their reality.  The conflict is whether or not the robot can complete its purpose based on its beliefs or the reality.

QT-1 believes that human beings are not important.  They die fast and they are expendable.  

Destiny (video game)

TV show: Dr. Who (“The Ood”): alien race made to serve

“Reason” by IA is a short story set in the year 2058AD.  The robot that they have constructed gains consciousness and believes that it the humans that built him did not really build him.  Therefore, he develops his own beliefs and that the converter is his one true creator and his one purpose in life is to serve him/her/it. 

Narrator: third person omniscient

Can you read Bester’s “Fondly Fahrenheit” as a continuation of Asimov’s “Reason”?  Why?  In what ways may it be a commentary on Asimov’s “Reason”?