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"I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled 'Science Fiction' and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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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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'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
'Then he became aware of a gentle pressure pushing him away from the ship.'
'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
