What’s a Little Monotony?: The Mundane Foundation of Isaac Asimov’s Robot Stories Jonathan Hay © Jonathan Hay, 2020 It is instructive to note that the billionaire cies is plainly significant. Fiona Hobden as- Elon Musk’s endeavours to colonise Mars are tutely emphasises that the past of our species heavily influenced by Isaac Asimov’s science is “not a real place we could visit, if only we fiction. Musk lists Asimov’s Foundation trilo- had a time-machine [...] Rather it is the mal- gy as one of the favourite series of his child- leable, increasingly nuanced, and ever- hood (in Vance, 2016: 33), and he chose to changing product of our imaginative engage- send a digital copy of it into heliocentric orbit ment” with the contemporary and surviving along with his Tesla Roadster in 2018 representations of history which comprise the (Gartenberg, 2018: online). The statement only permanent artefact of the past (Hobden, this launch made is apparent; Musk consid- 2009: 149). As she states, via their positions ers himself to be engendering the telos of as popular cultural productions, SF texts set Asimov’s SF writings in our contemporary in the past of our species actively intervene in world by paving the way for the colonisation the recorded histories with which their nar- of the solar system by humanity. As far as ratives are interfaced, and so imaginatively Musk seems to be concerned, Asimov’s SF vi- and substantially alter their viewers’ under- sions are becoming reality, and this perspec- standing of the history of Homo Sapiens. tive draws a productive parallel with Asi- In this article, I argue that the converse is mov’s own reflections on the prognostic true for texts set in the future of our species, qualities of his SF works in his introduction such as Asimov’s robot stories. Specifically, a to The Complete Robot. parallel and analogous process results from Asimov confesses his surprise that Joseph readers’ imaginative engagement with SF Engelberger, the owner of what was then the texts in respect to their perspectival outlook largest robot manufacturer in the world, had upon both our species’ present and future. grown “interested in robots in the 1940s Via their cognitive engagement with futuris- when [...] reading the robot stories of his fel- tic SFnal (or science-fictional) discourses such low Columbian Isaac Asimov” (Asimov, as Asimov’s future history series, readers are 2018a: 3). Although he was unaware of the encouraged to recognise the profound extent influence they would subsequently exert on to which their own contemporary situation speculative currents of thought at the time he within a technologized everyday lifeworld in- wrote them, by writing his robot stories Asi- forms the prospective cognitive frame of ref- mov, as he himself realized, started “a chain erence of our species. Through their conspic- of events that is changing the face of the uously mundane qualities, Asimov’s robot world” (Asimov, 2018a: 4). Certainly, the in- stories dramatise a movement beyond the fluence which popular texts of the SF genre technological present, and contribute towards bear upon the technological future of our spe- a post-humanistic conception of humanity. As REVISTA HÉLICE: Volumen VI, n.º 1 52 PRIMAVERA-VERANO 2020 REFLEXIONES What’s a Little Monotony?: The Mundane Foundation of Isaac Asimov’s Robot Stories I shall demonstrate in this article—through the two categories teetering on the brink of the close textual analysis of The Complete “collapsing into a unity” (2005: 199). Robot, The Positronic Man, The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, and The Robots of Dawn—the “consciousness-expanding” (Hob- In this article, I argue that den, 2009: 149) or post-humanistic aspects of Asimov’s robot stories are cognitively ground- the converse is true for ed, via those texts’ reinscription of mundane aspects of their readers’ lifeworlds into their texts set in the future of SFnal ones. The sense of wonder evoked by the robots of these texts is not displaced by our species, such as Asimov’s emphasis upon the mundane, ra- ther, he demonstrates that the mundane Asimov’s robot stories. lifeworld forms the essential foundation of their SFnal nova. Since Asimov repeatedly underscores the extent to which robots are a banal aspect of the lifeworlds of many of the characters who The Complete Robot: Everyday Begin- inhabit The Complete Robot, the novel figure nings of the robot necessarily decays in novelty as the collection proceeds. Although Donald M. As Asimov suggests in the introduction to his Hassler proposes that the Three Laws of Ro- extensive short story collection The Complete botics “seem hardly profound or a great in- Robot (1982), the influence of his SFnal sto- vention of the imagination”, and adds that ries contributed towards the eventuation of “[t]hey are neutral” speculative devices, their our present lifeworld, in which algorithmic author certainly gets a huge deal of cognitive technologies are commonplace. Asimov’s be- mileage out of them (1991: 42). Asimov re- nevolent rendering of robots therefore con- works the robotic novum throughout the doz- tributed to their genesis in physical reality. ens of stories in the collection (written be- As Adam Roberts states, whereas “robots had tween 1939 and 1977) by making the robotic previously been, almost exclusively, insensate characters of each specific story distinct from or dangerous embodiments of the threat of those of others, in some manner which be- technology, Asimov imagined artificially con- comes a fundamental component of that sto- structed and intelligent robots as not only ry’s distinct plot. In each story, the Three humane, but in many ways as more humane Laws are either reworked, broken slightly, or than humanity” (2005: 198, original empha- exemplified in a new context.1 sis). This is not, however, to suggest that Asimov’s rendering of robots centres around —————————— 1 an intractable binarism. As Roberts clarifies, The Three Laws of Robotics are as follows: First Law; a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inac- Asimov is not interested in theorising that tion, allow a human being to come to harm. Second Law; robots are superior to humans; he is interest- a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings ed in the interstices formed through the het- except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Third Law; a robot must protect its own existence erogeneous interactions between the two as long as such protection does not conflict with the First supposedly distinct entities, and at times, or Second laws. Neither Asimov nor John W. Campbell, with problematising the ostensible natural- the editor of many of his early stories, wanted to take full credit for the formulation of the Three Laws. As Asimov ness of the robot/human dichotomy, to show comments within In Memory Yet Green, ultimately, per- REVISTA HÉLICE: Volumen VI, n.º 1 53 PRIMAVERA-VERANO 2020 REFLEXIONES What’s a Little Monotony?: The Mundane Foundation of Isaac Asimov’s Robot Stories Thus, Asimov demonstrates that the Gloria’s father, meanwhile, is preoccupied Three Laws are not entirely prescriptive, but with ensuring that he has a “good hearty rather, their ostensibly deterministic funda- dinner below the hatches; a nice, soft, dilapi- ment actually gives rise to many different dated couch on which to sprawl; a copy of The behaviours and responses in practice. This Times; slippered feet and shirtless chest” complexity formulates something akin to a (145) every Sunday afternoon. As Joseph F. robot “psychology” (Auger, 2009: 22), whose Patrouch Jr. correctly states, all George Wes- elucidation is drawn out over the course of ton wants “is to be left alone so he can read the robot stories and novels. As the robot his paper” (1978: 38), and he therefore ig- novum inevitably decays throughout these nores his wife’s concerns about Robbie’s ca- stories accumulatively, the rhetorical and pabilities in order to pursue his bourgeois narrative positionality of robots antithetically routine. Despite him living in a technologized becomes more complex. Yet, where the com- society where positronic robots are not only plexity of robots increases in the series, hu- affordable, but advanced enough so as to be man psychology becomes a signifier of the capable of undertaking childcare duties, they banal in parallel, as the cognitive capacities are a technology unworthy of sustained at- of our species become increasingly inferior tention, from his habitually preoccupied comparatively. mindset. Therefore, Gloria’s desire to be reu- In his earliest robot story “Robbie” (1940), nited with her robotic friend seems insignifi- Asimov emphasises the eponymous robot’s cant to him, since he considers robots to be situation within the cultural gestalt of the nothing more than practical contrivances to diegetic world by laying particular emphasis facilitate the smooth performance of menial upon characters’ phenomenological perspec- tasks. When Gloria unexpectedly mentions tives. When Robbie spins his eight-year-old Robbie a month after he has been returned to owner Gloria around in the air, the narrative his manufacturer, George cannot suppress “a notes that “for her the world fell away for a strangled gasp [...] then a bout of choking moment” (141, emphasis mine), highlighting coughs” (153) at the realisation that his that there are two characters with a perspec- daughter continues to expend thought upon a tival outlook on the event, and hence, imply- robot; the banal has turned sour in his ing that hers and Robbie’s phenomenological mouth. positions are dissimilar. For Mrs Weston, Whilst George Weston is content with his whilst Robbie was “a novelty [...] a fashiona- material conditions, and positively fixates ble thing to do” (146) when he was initially upon his quotidian routine, it is Robbie him- bought, the thought that her neighbours self who harbours dreams beyond the mun- might disapprove of her daughter’s close dane, and is capable of imagining life within friendship with a robot when she has to alternative material conditions—to the extent “meet them every day” (148) is a greater de- that he has asked Gloria to read him the terminant of motive.