The Robot Stories

Author: Isaac Asimov

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. The Three Laws of Robotics are one of the most famous inventions in all of science fiction. Robots were traditionally presented as a threat to humanity, an underclass that would inevitably revolt. Asimov thought that idea was nonsense, and devised the Three Laws as a way of showing robots as sympathetic. Naturally, he then spent most of his robot stories trying to subvert or undermine the Three Laws, but they still provided the guiding principle not just of the stories collected in I, Robot and The Rest of the Robots, but in novels like Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun. One of the later robot stories, "The Bicentennial Man" which won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novelette, features a robot who becomes human, but that was the trajectory of all of his robot stories. They are a fascinating study in characters who start out as machines but always prove themselves to be something more.Why it's on the list: Asimov's robot stories changed the game. Everyone who wrote about robots afterwards recognized the Three Laws, either explicitly or implicitly. Even work written in opposition to Asimov, such as John Sladek's Roderick, still pays homage to the influence of Asimov's work. Still today you'll find references to asimov circuits or positronic games; even in the real world there's now a company called iRobot and a Japanese robot named Asimo. The whole enterprise of robotics, real and fictional, owes a debt of gratitude to Isaac Asimov.