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Roderick #1
Roderick
He isn't human; but he isn't all robot either. He started life in a lab, went to Parochial School, was kidnapped by gypsies, chased by roboticidal, and incompetent, hit-men, told fortunes on the Midway, and finally fostered by an elderly couple who gave up writing science fiction when their stories came true. He's Roderick, the first robot programmed to learn and think, and sent out into the world to re-invent it...
256 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1980
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944 people want to read
About the author
John Sladek
106 books78 followers
John Thomas Sladek
(generally published as John Sladek or John T. Sladek, as well as under the pseudonyms Thom Demijohn, Barry DuBray, Carl Truhacker and others) was an American science fiction author, known for his satirical and surreal novels.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
July 15, 2012
It is one of the few books I've read twice. First because it has my name on the front (and I have been accused on more than one occasion of being an android) and second, twenty years later, because my sister bought for me because it has my name on it.
It is good SF, clever satire and funny too, but not laugh out loud funny, though that could be my android side.
Will I read it a third time? It's got my name on it so at some time, probably yes.
It is good SF, clever satire and funny too, but not laugh out loud funny, though that could be my android side.
Will I read it a third time? It's got my name on it so at some time, probably yes.
October 20, 2008
A 21st century version of Candide with a sweet natured, simple robot seeing every thing without passing moral judgment. This is how the culture accepts at face value.
August 10, 2016
I thought this'd be a good follow-up to Mockingbird because it's about a robot in a human world whereas Mockingbird is about people in a robotic world. Roderick’s life story isn’t much of an investigation or exploration of sentience, consciousness, or humanity. The innocent robot hero grows up by being bounced (by Sladek) from one crazy frying pan to another zany fire. Goofy one-note characters randomly appear and disappear. The great irony is that such a life has a realistic shape (ie, amorphous) though that’s exactly what makes his story unsatisfying as fiction. A satire usually aims to teach us a lesson. I think Sladek’s point is that humans as a whole (and especially in groups larger than three) are terrible to one another. Sometimes they’re good, though usually only in small doses and/or small groups. I do not agree with the bookjacket blurb that says this is “a major American novel,” but i do agree with another that says, “it reeks ... of Candide.” So now i'm rereading Voltaire’s tiny satire.
Being nice: Sladek creates word collages with snippets of overheard conversation and menageries of nouns/subjects complemented by flocks of verbs/predicates.
Being picky: Alas, this fictional world seemed too farcical and caricaturized when it wasn’t depicted via expressionism or pointilism.
Nice: Each supporting character had a clear, dominant trait, which helped me quickly navigate Sladek’s dramatic and blind narrative leaps.
Picky: Each supporting character consisted of nothing more than a single trait and (sometimes) a name.
Nice: Sladek provides some logic puzzles that you might enjoy trying to solve.
Picky: They’re irrelevant.
4 stars for style points but only a weak 3 stars for character + story.
Being nice: Sladek creates word collages with snippets of overheard conversation and menageries of nouns/subjects complemented by flocks of verbs/predicates.
Being picky: Alas, this fictional world seemed too farcical and caricaturized when it wasn’t depicted via expressionism or pointilism.
Nice: Each supporting character had a clear, dominant trait, which helped me quickly navigate Sladek’s dramatic and blind narrative leaps.
Picky: Each supporting character consisted of nothing more than a single trait and (sometimes) a name.
Nice: Sladek provides some logic puzzles that you might enjoy trying to solve.
Picky: They’re irrelevant.
4 stars for style points but only a weak 3 stars for character + story.
July 18, 2013
Thirty years after publication, the novelty of the satire and the writing form is lost. To the extent that the novel contemplates how pulp science fiction compares with the modern day, there is something to the novel. Most of the satire is repetitious of other material, often dating back to Candide.
August 20, 2015
Quit after 20 pages. While I am not a fan of “Catch-22” I do appreciate the skill present in Heller’s writing. “Roderick” attempts a similar mood (satirical exploration of authority, etc.) without the urgency or solid prose.
March 15, 2014
Brilliantly written, like Dietsch or Brunner. Clever academic satire as well.
May 19, 2016
review of
John Sladek's Roderick
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 17, 2016
For the full thrill-ride of a review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
I've only previously read Sladek's Mechasm (see my full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ). The cover has an image of a stereotypical bully boy punching a small robot in its face while another boy looks on from inside a trashcan. I bought this partially b/c I thought the cover was funny.
The beginning of my review of Mechasm states: "This bk was.. odd.. or maybe it was just the mood I was in when I read it.. It's a sortof Dr. Strangelove style parody.." Perhaps Roderick is a coming-of-age-&-losing-innocence story. More or less every character is presented cynically w/ exaggerated flaws, they're caricatures. Still, b/c of the flaws they're 'human':
"At the University Health Service a yawning intern used a tongue depressor to mark his place in The Heart of the Matter ("somewhere far away he thought he heard the sounds of pain.") and decided to order more flu vaccine—a wind like that. He scooted in his swivel chair to the console of the inventory computer and began playing its keys. In no time at all he was able to order three trillion—oops, thousand, 3,000 doxes—dose, damnit, doses!" - p 12
Given that this was published in 1980, the humor of typos might've been a little abstruse at the time - but to people who regularly use cell-phone keyboards that're too small for their fingers this is a common scenario.
Sladek's presentation of the NASA man is a bit.. odd.. certainly irregular insofar as he's presented as a fairly ignorant 'cracker':
"["]What NASA really wants from you—are you ready?—is a real robot."
""A what?"
""A real, complete, functioning artificial man. It don't matter what he looks like, a course. I mean a space robot don't have to win no beauty contests. But he's gotta have a real human brain, you with me so far?"" - p 15
As it turns out, this NASA man ain't quite what he's presenting himself to be.. - but that's a spoiler. At any rate, Roderick's 'birth' is off to a bad start. Roderick's designers are building learning abilities into him. Why is a raven like a writing desk?
""'There a like because they both sound like they begin with R. There a like they both have some syllables more than one. There a like because one is like a bird and theres a bird called a secretary and the other is like a furniture and theres a furniture called a secretary too. Or may be they both have quills which are like old pens. May be E. A. Poe wrote one when he sat at the other or is that a like? There both inky. I give up. I give up. There a like because otherwise you wouldnot ask me why. Or there a like because there both in the same riddle—'"" - p 17
"It first appeared in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a famously creepy children's book which Lewis Carroll wrote in 1865. Alice falls asleep one day, follows a white rabbit down a rabbit hole, and ends up in a world of crazy logic which Carroll based on what he considered the nonsensical logic that was piling up in his chosen field of mathematics. Arguably the craziest characters are the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. Alice ends up at a tea party with them, and the Mad Hatter asks her the now-famous question, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?"
[..]
"The unanswered riddle, which many people were exposed to in their formative years, got under people's skin. In their attempt to adequately extricate it, they've come up with answers. A satisfying, but meta, answer is, "Poe wrote on both," given by puzzle enthusiast Sam Lloyd. More in the spirit of the nonsense genre, Aldous Huxley ventured, "Because there is a 'b' in both and an 'n' in neither." Beautifully bizarre." - Esther Inglis-Arkell - http://io9.gizmodo.com/5872014/the-an...
Roderick undergoes other similar pop culture challenges:
""Okay, the face. Whatever it is, I call it a face. White and black, mostly white. Hole-eyes. A black nose. the nose looks like a black Ping-Pong ball, does that make sense? Come to think of it, the ears—if they're ears—on top look like two Ping-Pong paddles, also black. O call them Ping and Pong, and one day they were walking through the deep dark forest and . . ."" - p 29
NASA has been seriously debased in Sladek's future world:
"["]Look, there's a picture of Luke Draeger, remember him!" None of them did. "I seen him walk on the Moon, boys, I helped put him there. Or was it Mars? Anyways, NASA still means something to some of us. It means—it means—billowing exhaust clouds catching the first light of dawn, a silver needle rising, reaching for the fucking stars! The puny crittur we call Man setting out to conquer the stars, to rendezvous with his Eternal Destiny! Call me a dreamer, boys, but I see Man leaping out from this little planet of ours, to the Moon, to the planets, to our neighboring stars and finally beyond—into the cock-sucking Unknown!"" - p 21
Literally NONE of the characters in Roderick are presented as 100% positive protagonists. Whether they're professors or students they're all riddled w/ foibles. Dr. Fred is a spin on an old school racist:
"But the bell prevented further development of this, Dr. Fred's favorite theory: that Northernness was a necessary precondition of civilization. The cause, he felt, was magnetism: just being closer to the North Pole seemed somehow to elevate the human brain waves to produce higher thoughts. Without this magnetic boost, man remained primitive and uncreative. Thus the Southern hemisphere produced crude mud huts instead of cathedrals; witch doctors instead of penicillin; cannibals instead of vegetarians; boomerangs instead of ICBMs—though perhaps he would not develop his theory quite that far." - p 32
Rogers is another one, a typical two-faced manipulator:
""Fong more or less admits NASA pulled out because of some swindle. Swindle, that's right. He says it's internal to NASA, but you and I know how these things go. You can always get somebody to admit as much of the truth as won't hurt him at the moment, right? . . . So I don't know about you, I don't feel much like risking it. Not that I'd accuse Fong of anything, nice guy really, but a little legitimate caution might not be a bad . . . right. Right, see you."
"He pushed a button, checked off a name on the list, and pushed another button. "Dr. Tarr, you still there? I've just had Asperson on the other line, sounding him out, him and a few others on the committee, and we think—frankly, we agree something smells about this robot project." - p 37
But Rogers's sleaze gets countered:
"Dr. Jane Hannah's face was impassive, the face of a Cheyenne brave—which, during her early years in anthropology, she had been. "Facts, you say. I keep hearing opinions."
""Okay, sure, if you want my opinion, we should turn them down. With all these fraud rumors, I don't see how Fong's people can expect special treatment."
"She raised her martini, mumbled something over it, and took a sip. "Why not special treatment? Maybe what they have to give us is more precious than anything they could possibly have stolen. After all, true heroes can always break the rules. Think of Prometheus, stealing from the gods."" - p 56
"It was Aquinas, the Swine of Sicily, waddling on a Paris street, who was accosted by a stranger made entirely of wood, metal, glass, wax and leather—the automaton brought into being (through thirty years' work) by Albertus Magnus. Instantly Aquinas raised his staff and brought about the possibility of another thirty years' work . . ." - p 40
I find no mention of this incident or of the nickname "the Swine of Sicily" in the Wikipedia page for 'Saint' (I refuse to accept any Christinane as a 'Saint') Thomas of Aquinas but I do find a connection to Albertus Magnus:
"In 1245 Thomas was sent to study at the Faculty of the Arts at the University of Paris, where he most likely met Dominican scholar Albertus Magnus, then the Chair of Theology at the College of St. James in Paris. When Albertus was sent by his superiors to teach at the new studium generale at Cologne in 1248, Thomas followed him, declining Pope Innocent IV's offer to appoint him abbot of Monte Cassino as a Dominican. Albertus then appointed the reluctant Thomas magister studentium. Because Thomas was quiet and didn't speak much, some of his fellow students thought he was slow. But Albertus prophetically exclaimed: "You call him the dumb ox, but in his teaching he will one day produce such a bellowing that it will be heard throughout the world."" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_...
Then again I don't find any mention of Magnus building automatons in his Wikipedia entry either. In both entries the emphasis is partially on these men being "Saint"s in the Catholic Church's pantheon. Wd it be 'anti-thetical' for a 'Saint' to 'rival God' by building an artificial man? Contrary to this theory, there's a website of the "Jacques Maritain Center" that claims that the Catholic Church is not against science & that recounts this story about Magnus & Aquinas:
"Another legend relates to an automaton that he labored thirty year to produce, which he succeeded in making to speak. St. Thomas, the legend says, came unawares upon it in the workshop of Albert, and was so startled that he seized a stick, and shrieking Salve! Salve! smashed the fearful monster to pieces, thinking it to be some cruel savage who was about to attempt his life. The truth is this: Albert could manufacture automata, which were made to move by means of mercury, after the manner of Chinese mannikins and tumbling-toys; and it is possible that he may have constructed small mechanical figures capable of emitting sounds, for he speaks of these inventions as things then known. "The Barbiton," he says, "is a figure with a long beard, from the mouth of which comes a tube, with a bellows attached to one side. It is set in motion by the introduction of air into the tube, so that the bearded mannikin appears to play the flute." Albert probably manufactured an automaton of this kind, capable of moving and uttering the word Salve, so that the legend about St. Thomas's vigorous application of the stick is founded upon a historical fact." - http://www3.nd.edu/Departments/Marita...
Giordano Bruno & Copernicus, among others, wd've probably been surprised to learn that the Catholic Church isn't against science. Ah! The great rehistorification!
"Aikin controlled his stutter remarkably well today, as he outlined his plan for crime prevention by use of the pendulum. He was becoming quite an authority on this psychic instrument, Tarr noticed. Too bad he still had such a hell of a time with that key word.
"Aikin unfolded a map. "See, here I've been and located the three places where this 'Ripper,' this murderer left his victims. The vibrations are very strong, even on a map. Using the p-p-p----swinging thing—I was able to locate them precisely."" - p 53
That interests me for 2 main reasons:
1. I'm a sucker for excuses for introducing unusual speech patterns into narration - such as w/ Jonathan Lethem's use of Tourette's Syndrome in Motherless Brooklyn (2000) & possibly elsewhere: "Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways." - http://www.amazon.com/Motherless-Broo...
2. According to wikipedia: "A strict materialist, Sladek subjected the occult and pseudoscience to merciless scrutiny in The New Apocrypha. The book critically examined the claims of dowsing, homeopathy, parapsychology, perpetual motion and Ufology." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Th...
Sladek parodies everything he writes about, including the academic process of applying for funding:
"Byron Dollsly grinned and slapped his heavy hand on the table. "Scope! Hah! Think you'll find plenty of scope in my idea, George. See how this grabs you. As you know, I've been working on lines suggested by Teilhard de Chardin, Buckminster Fuller and others, namely a kind of engineering approach to consciousness. Well!"
"He beamed at Tarr and Aikin in turn, while they sat awaiting further enlightenment. "Well, I've only had a major breakthrough, that's all. As I see it, we have to begin with first principles. Biology!"
"After a moment, Tarr took his pipe from his mouth. "Is that it? Biology?"
""Is that it, he asks. Hah! Okay, let me spell it out for you. The divine Teilhard saw life as a radial force, and consciousness as a tangential force. Life, see, is like a gear-wheel growing larger, while consciousness is the gear actually turning—meshing!"" - p 54
In Sladek's world anything can go wrong for the stupidest reasons. EG: an assassin who goes to the wrong bar for a meet w/ his fellow killers & who gets into a conversation w/ the wrong person who has no idea what he's talking about but puts their own spin on it anyway:
"["]Fact is, I get a lot of satisfaction out of workin' alone, you know? Boy when you see their faces—when they realize what's comin' off—" He chuckled. "Makes it all worthwhile."
""I'll bet. But do you usually see their faces? I thought—"
""Even when you don't, you still know what they're thinkin'. Boy Howdy! It's like real communication! I mean in everyday life you just never get that close to nobody. real communication."
""I know just what you mean," she said. Nice to meet someone who liked his work, even if he did carry the off-stage villainy thing too far." - p 62
Everyone is limited by their own fantasy worlds. The police chief is writing a cop novel:
"Dobbin wrote slowly and carefully, his tongue protruding at the corner of his mouth:
""Don't touch me," she said. "Don't ever touch me again. Why was I ever dumb enough to marry a cop?"
"Suddenly I felt big and awkward and very, very tired. "Look, I know it's our anniversary, but this Delmore diamond case is ready to crack wide open—"
""And then there'll be some other case," she said, her mouth set hard. "Maybe when you give all you've got to your work, there's just nothing left for me."
""She was near the window when it happened. Suddenly the glass blossomed into a spider-web pattern, with a hole in the middle the size of a .303 slug. There was a matching hole in Laura's lovely throat. Even before she hit the floor, she was very, very—" - pp 69-70
&, of course, Sladek likes to throw in surprises, things that don't match the stereotypes he's created for his characters. Take, eg, the reading material of the visiting tyrant Shah:
""The pianola," continued the Shah. "An excellent symbol for the automaton, yes? It is I believe also used by Mr. W, Gaddis in his novelle J.R. where he speaks of Oscar Wilde traveling in America, marveling at the industry, the young industry you understand. Now I do believe Mt. Wilde suggested shooting all the piano players and using the pianola instead, or do I have that erroneously?"" - p 72
Roderick ends up in the neglect (as opposed to care) of a back-to-nature couple of sorts whose eco-cynicism marks them as being as venal as most of the other characters:
"Of course he still cared about the global environment, in a way. He still wrote articles about the blue whale and the white rhino. Not his fault if they turned into promotional tie-ins for glossy magazine spreads selling dog food and deodorants. He had to live. Had to swim with the current and survive. People got tired worrying about Spaceship Earth, they wanted to concentrate on Spaceship Me." - p 102
Fortunately for Roderick he moves on to "Ma" & "Pa":
""That's the third time I've called you to dinner," said Ma, coming into the workshop. "What are you inventing out here?"
"He started. "Oh, uh, well I'm not sure what it is until it's finished. Might turn out to be a puzzle that nobody can take apart." He turned the gadget over, frowning down at it. "Or it might be the start of something really big—a tap-dancing show that knows all the steps—or even a car that runs on scrap metal."" - p 115
Just those last 2 ideas alone cd be expanded into a novel's worth of material. Ma & Pa are the people who wd function the least smoothly in relation to the 'real' world. As such, they're Sladek's most sympathetic characters:
""Come on, you enjoyed every minute of it, you even made up that little card for me, remember? On one side it said, 'I am a communist,' and on the other, 'Communists always think they're cards.' "
"She sniffed. "I had to join the Ladies' Guild to smooth that over."
""Yes, I seem to remember your getting them all around here for a seance, wasn't it? Getting in touch with a flying saucer, don't tell me you didn't enjoy that. Working away on the old ouija board and all the time—"
""Just a few lines of Tristan Tzara, to perk them up," she said. "For their own good, really." She sat back on her chair until the noonday sun caught her white hair and gleamed on the green scalp beneath." - p 117
I wish I'd thought of that one myself.
Sladek's not exactly one for happy endings.. but I reckon I'll have to read the rest of the Roderick trilogy to find out, eh?!:
"A gold tooth grinned back at Roderick, wrinkles smiled, a watery tooth winked, and a tattooed hand patted his dome. The children smiled in their sleep, the woman with ear-rings blew him a kiss, and even the baby seemed to wave its foot in congratulations. Roderick was a gypsy hero, and now there was no question of sending him to the junk-yard.
"Instead, later that night, they sold him into slavery." - p 138
Sladek parodies J. Edgar Hoover's famous denial of the existence of organized crime, reputedly because he got racing types from the mob:
""These people you knew that was into call girls, who, was it the Mafia?"
""There's no such thing as the Mafia,"" - p 140
Sladek even seems to get his digs in at the art world, Andy Warhol in particular:
"Mr. Vitanuova spread his wide face in a smile and his wide hands in a benediction. "Me, I don't understand nothing. It's the wife, see? She knows Art like I know garbage. No wait, don't get sore, hey I don't mean this is garbage, I mean real garbage, it's my business."" - p 184
When I was reading this I thought it was a reference to Ethel Scull, the 1st person to commission a portrait from Warhol in 1963. I misremembered her husband as being a garbage tycoon. However, I read online that he was a taxi tycoon instead. It still seems likely that this section is a Warhol parody, tho, b/c of the following:
""Did you cover that boring exhibition of wrecked cars last May?"
""Not me, you mean the freeway thing, when all those cars and trucks piled up? I wanted to go, really, thought it sounded enterprising at least, getting out there and casting the whole mess in fiberglass right on the spot, I mean whatsisname, Jough Braun must have been actually cruising the city with a ton of epoxy—imagine getting an actual body in there!"
For the full thrill-ride of a review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
John Sladek's Roderick
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - May 17, 2016
For the full thrill-ride of a review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
I've only previously read Sladek's Mechasm (see my full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ). The cover has an image of a stereotypical bully boy punching a small robot in its face while another boy looks on from inside a trashcan. I bought this partially b/c I thought the cover was funny.
The beginning of my review of Mechasm states: "This bk was.. odd.. or maybe it was just the mood I was in when I read it.. It's a sortof Dr. Strangelove style parody.." Perhaps Roderick is a coming-of-age-&-losing-innocence story. More or less every character is presented cynically w/ exaggerated flaws, they're caricatures. Still, b/c of the flaws they're 'human':
"At the University Health Service a yawning intern used a tongue depressor to mark his place in The Heart of the Matter ("somewhere far away he thought he heard the sounds of pain.") and decided to order more flu vaccine—a wind like that. He scooted in his swivel chair to the console of the inventory computer and began playing its keys. In no time at all he was able to order three trillion—oops, thousand, 3,000 doxes—dose, damnit, doses!" - p 12
Given that this was published in 1980, the humor of typos might've been a little abstruse at the time - but to people who regularly use cell-phone keyboards that're too small for their fingers this is a common scenario.
Sladek's presentation of the NASA man is a bit.. odd.. certainly irregular insofar as he's presented as a fairly ignorant 'cracker':
"["]What NASA really wants from you—are you ready?—is a real robot."
""A what?"
""A real, complete, functioning artificial man. It don't matter what he looks like, a course. I mean a space robot don't have to win no beauty contests. But he's gotta have a real human brain, you with me so far?"" - p 15
As it turns out, this NASA man ain't quite what he's presenting himself to be.. - but that's a spoiler. At any rate, Roderick's 'birth' is off to a bad start. Roderick's designers are building learning abilities into him. Why is a raven like a writing desk?
""'There a like because they both sound like they begin with R. There a like they both have some syllables more than one. There a like because one is like a bird and theres a bird called a secretary and the other is like a furniture and theres a furniture called a secretary too. Or may be they both have quills which are like old pens. May be E. A. Poe wrote one when he sat at the other or is that a like? There both inky. I give up. I give up. There a like because otherwise you wouldnot ask me why. Or there a like because there both in the same riddle—'"" - p 17
"It first appeared in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a famously creepy children's book which Lewis Carroll wrote in 1865. Alice falls asleep one day, follows a white rabbit down a rabbit hole, and ends up in a world of crazy logic which Carroll based on what he considered the nonsensical logic that was piling up in his chosen field of mathematics. Arguably the craziest characters are the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. Alice ends up at a tea party with them, and the Mad Hatter asks her the now-famous question, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?"
[..]
"The unanswered riddle, which many people were exposed to in their formative years, got under people's skin. In their attempt to adequately extricate it, they've come up with answers. A satisfying, but meta, answer is, "Poe wrote on both," given by puzzle enthusiast Sam Lloyd. More in the spirit of the nonsense genre, Aldous Huxley ventured, "Because there is a 'b' in both and an 'n' in neither." Beautifully bizarre." - Esther Inglis-Arkell - http://io9.gizmodo.com/5872014/the-an...
Roderick undergoes other similar pop culture challenges:
""Okay, the face. Whatever it is, I call it a face. White and black, mostly white. Hole-eyes. A black nose. the nose looks like a black Ping-Pong ball, does that make sense? Come to think of it, the ears—if they're ears—on top look like two Ping-Pong paddles, also black. O call them Ping and Pong, and one day they were walking through the deep dark forest and . . ."" - p 29
NASA has been seriously debased in Sladek's future world:
"["]Look, there's a picture of Luke Draeger, remember him!" None of them did. "I seen him walk on the Moon, boys, I helped put him there. Or was it Mars? Anyways, NASA still means something to some of us. It means—it means—billowing exhaust clouds catching the first light of dawn, a silver needle rising, reaching for the fucking stars! The puny crittur we call Man setting out to conquer the stars, to rendezvous with his Eternal Destiny! Call me a dreamer, boys, but I see Man leaping out from this little planet of ours, to the Moon, to the planets, to our neighboring stars and finally beyond—into the cock-sucking Unknown!"" - p 21
Literally NONE of the characters in Roderick are presented as 100% positive protagonists. Whether they're professors or students they're all riddled w/ foibles. Dr. Fred is a spin on an old school racist:
"But the bell prevented further development of this, Dr. Fred's favorite theory: that Northernness was a necessary precondition of civilization. The cause, he felt, was magnetism: just being closer to the North Pole seemed somehow to elevate the human brain waves to produce higher thoughts. Without this magnetic boost, man remained primitive and uncreative. Thus the Southern hemisphere produced crude mud huts instead of cathedrals; witch doctors instead of penicillin; cannibals instead of vegetarians; boomerangs instead of ICBMs—though perhaps he would not develop his theory quite that far." - p 32
Rogers is another one, a typical two-faced manipulator:
""Fong more or less admits NASA pulled out because of some swindle. Swindle, that's right. He says it's internal to NASA, but you and I know how these things go. You can always get somebody to admit as much of the truth as won't hurt him at the moment, right? . . . So I don't know about you, I don't feel much like risking it. Not that I'd accuse Fong of anything, nice guy really, but a little legitimate caution might not be a bad . . . right. Right, see you."
"He pushed a button, checked off a name on the list, and pushed another button. "Dr. Tarr, you still there? I've just had Asperson on the other line, sounding him out, him and a few others on the committee, and we think—frankly, we agree something smells about this robot project." - p 37
But Rogers's sleaze gets countered:
"Dr. Jane Hannah's face was impassive, the face of a Cheyenne brave—which, during her early years in anthropology, she had been. "Facts, you say. I keep hearing opinions."
""Okay, sure, if you want my opinion, we should turn them down. With all these fraud rumors, I don't see how Fong's people can expect special treatment."
"She raised her martini, mumbled something over it, and took a sip. "Why not special treatment? Maybe what they have to give us is more precious than anything they could possibly have stolen. After all, true heroes can always break the rules. Think of Prometheus, stealing from the gods."" - p 56
"It was Aquinas, the Swine of Sicily, waddling on a Paris street, who was accosted by a stranger made entirely of wood, metal, glass, wax and leather—the automaton brought into being (through thirty years' work) by Albertus Magnus. Instantly Aquinas raised his staff and brought about the possibility of another thirty years' work . . ." - p 40
I find no mention of this incident or of the nickname "the Swine of Sicily" in the Wikipedia page for 'Saint' (I refuse to accept any Christinane as a 'Saint') Thomas of Aquinas but I do find a connection to Albertus Magnus:
"In 1245 Thomas was sent to study at the Faculty of the Arts at the University of Paris, where he most likely met Dominican scholar Albertus Magnus, then the Chair of Theology at the College of St. James in Paris. When Albertus was sent by his superiors to teach at the new studium generale at Cologne in 1248, Thomas followed him, declining Pope Innocent IV's offer to appoint him abbot of Monte Cassino as a Dominican. Albertus then appointed the reluctant Thomas magister studentium. Because Thomas was quiet and didn't speak much, some of his fellow students thought he was slow. But Albertus prophetically exclaimed: "You call him the dumb ox, but in his teaching he will one day produce such a bellowing that it will be heard throughout the world."" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_...
Then again I don't find any mention of Magnus building automatons in his Wikipedia entry either. In both entries the emphasis is partially on these men being "Saint"s in the Catholic Church's pantheon. Wd it be 'anti-thetical' for a 'Saint' to 'rival God' by building an artificial man? Contrary to this theory, there's a website of the "Jacques Maritain Center" that claims that the Catholic Church is not against science & that recounts this story about Magnus & Aquinas:
"Another legend relates to an automaton that he labored thirty year to produce, which he succeeded in making to speak. St. Thomas, the legend says, came unawares upon it in the workshop of Albert, and was so startled that he seized a stick, and shrieking Salve! Salve! smashed the fearful monster to pieces, thinking it to be some cruel savage who was about to attempt his life. The truth is this: Albert could manufacture automata, which were made to move by means of mercury, after the manner of Chinese mannikins and tumbling-toys; and it is possible that he may have constructed small mechanical figures capable of emitting sounds, for he speaks of these inventions as things then known. "The Barbiton," he says, "is a figure with a long beard, from the mouth of which comes a tube, with a bellows attached to one side. It is set in motion by the introduction of air into the tube, so that the bearded mannikin appears to play the flute." Albert probably manufactured an automaton of this kind, capable of moving and uttering the word Salve, so that the legend about St. Thomas's vigorous application of the stick is founded upon a historical fact." - http://www3.nd.edu/Departments/Marita...
Giordano Bruno & Copernicus, among others, wd've probably been surprised to learn that the Catholic Church isn't against science. Ah! The great rehistorification!
"Aikin controlled his stutter remarkably well today, as he outlined his plan for crime prevention by use of the pendulum. He was becoming quite an authority on this psychic instrument, Tarr noticed. Too bad he still had such a hell of a time with that key word.
"Aikin unfolded a map. "See, here I've been and located the three places where this 'Ripper,' this murderer left his victims. The vibrations are very strong, even on a map. Using the p-p-p----swinging thing—I was able to locate them precisely."" - p 53
That interests me for 2 main reasons:
1. I'm a sucker for excuses for introducing unusual speech patterns into narration - such as w/ Jonathan Lethem's use of Tourette's Syndrome in Motherless Brooklyn (2000) & possibly elsewhere: "Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways." - http://www.amazon.com/Motherless-Broo...
2. According to wikipedia: "A strict materialist, Sladek subjected the occult and pseudoscience to merciless scrutiny in The New Apocrypha. The book critically examined the claims of dowsing, homeopathy, parapsychology, perpetual motion and Ufology." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Th...
Sladek parodies everything he writes about, including the academic process of applying for funding:
"Byron Dollsly grinned and slapped his heavy hand on the table. "Scope! Hah! Think you'll find plenty of scope in my idea, George. See how this grabs you. As you know, I've been working on lines suggested by Teilhard de Chardin, Buckminster Fuller and others, namely a kind of engineering approach to consciousness. Well!"
"He beamed at Tarr and Aikin in turn, while they sat awaiting further enlightenment. "Well, I've only had a major breakthrough, that's all. As I see it, we have to begin with first principles. Biology!"
"After a moment, Tarr took his pipe from his mouth. "Is that it? Biology?"
""Is that it, he asks. Hah! Okay, let me spell it out for you. The divine Teilhard saw life as a radial force, and consciousness as a tangential force. Life, see, is like a gear-wheel growing larger, while consciousness is the gear actually turning—meshing!"" - p 54
In Sladek's world anything can go wrong for the stupidest reasons. EG: an assassin who goes to the wrong bar for a meet w/ his fellow killers & who gets into a conversation w/ the wrong person who has no idea what he's talking about but puts their own spin on it anyway:
"["]Fact is, I get a lot of satisfaction out of workin' alone, you know? Boy when you see their faces—when they realize what's comin' off—" He chuckled. "Makes it all worthwhile."
""I'll bet. But do you usually see their faces? I thought—"
""Even when you don't, you still know what they're thinkin'. Boy Howdy! It's like real communication! I mean in everyday life you just never get that close to nobody. real communication."
""I know just what you mean," she said. Nice to meet someone who liked his work, even if he did carry the off-stage villainy thing too far." - p 62
Everyone is limited by their own fantasy worlds. The police chief is writing a cop novel:
"Dobbin wrote slowly and carefully, his tongue protruding at the corner of his mouth:
""Don't touch me," she said. "Don't ever touch me again. Why was I ever dumb enough to marry a cop?"
"Suddenly I felt big and awkward and very, very tired. "Look, I know it's our anniversary, but this Delmore diamond case is ready to crack wide open—"
""And then there'll be some other case," she said, her mouth set hard. "Maybe when you give all you've got to your work, there's just nothing left for me."
""She was near the window when it happened. Suddenly the glass blossomed into a spider-web pattern, with a hole in the middle the size of a .303 slug. There was a matching hole in Laura's lovely throat. Even before she hit the floor, she was very, very—" - pp 69-70
&, of course, Sladek likes to throw in surprises, things that don't match the stereotypes he's created for his characters. Take, eg, the reading material of the visiting tyrant Shah:
""The pianola," continued the Shah. "An excellent symbol for the automaton, yes? It is I believe also used by Mr. W, Gaddis in his novelle J.R. where he speaks of Oscar Wilde traveling in America, marveling at the industry, the young industry you understand. Now I do believe Mt. Wilde suggested shooting all the piano players and using the pianola instead, or do I have that erroneously?"" - p 72
Roderick ends up in the neglect (as opposed to care) of a back-to-nature couple of sorts whose eco-cynicism marks them as being as venal as most of the other characters:
"Of course he still cared about the global environment, in a way. He still wrote articles about the blue whale and the white rhino. Not his fault if they turned into promotional tie-ins for glossy magazine spreads selling dog food and deodorants. He had to live. Had to swim with the current and survive. People got tired worrying about Spaceship Earth, they wanted to concentrate on Spaceship Me." - p 102
Fortunately for Roderick he moves on to "Ma" & "Pa":
""That's the third time I've called you to dinner," said Ma, coming into the workshop. "What are you inventing out here?"
"He started. "Oh, uh, well I'm not sure what it is until it's finished. Might turn out to be a puzzle that nobody can take apart." He turned the gadget over, frowning down at it. "Or it might be the start of something really big—a tap-dancing show that knows all the steps—or even a car that runs on scrap metal."" - p 115
Just those last 2 ideas alone cd be expanded into a novel's worth of material. Ma & Pa are the people who wd function the least smoothly in relation to the 'real' world. As such, they're Sladek's most sympathetic characters:
""Come on, you enjoyed every minute of it, you even made up that little card for me, remember? On one side it said, 'I am a communist,' and on the other, 'Communists always think they're cards.' "
"She sniffed. "I had to join the Ladies' Guild to smooth that over."
""Yes, I seem to remember your getting them all around here for a seance, wasn't it? Getting in touch with a flying saucer, don't tell me you didn't enjoy that. Working away on the old ouija board and all the time—"
""Just a few lines of Tristan Tzara, to perk them up," she said. "For their own good, really." She sat back on her chair until the noonday sun caught her white hair and gleamed on the green scalp beneath." - p 117
I wish I'd thought of that one myself.
Sladek's not exactly one for happy endings.. but I reckon I'll have to read the rest of the Roderick trilogy to find out, eh?!:
"A gold tooth grinned back at Roderick, wrinkles smiled, a watery tooth winked, and a tattooed hand patted his dome. The children smiled in their sleep, the woman with ear-rings blew him a kiss, and even the baby seemed to wave its foot in congratulations. Roderick was a gypsy hero, and now there was no question of sending him to the junk-yard.
"Instead, later that night, they sold him into slavery." - p 138
Sladek parodies J. Edgar Hoover's famous denial of the existence of organized crime, reputedly because he got racing types from the mob:
""These people you knew that was into call girls, who, was it the Mafia?"
""There's no such thing as the Mafia,"" - p 140
Sladek even seems to get his digs in at the art world, Andy Warhol in particular:
"Mr. Vitanuova spread his wide face in a smile and his wide hands in a benediction. "Me, I don't understand nothing. It's the wife, see? She knows Art like I know garbage. No wait, don't get sore, hey I don't mean this is garbage, I mean real garbage, it's my business."" - p 184
When I was reading this I thought it was a reference to Ethel Scull, the 1st person to commission a portrait from Warhol in 1963. I misremembered her husband as being a garbage tycoon. However, I read online that he was a taxi tycoon instead. It still seems likely that this section is a Warhol parody, tho, b/c of the following:
""Did you cover that boring exhibition of wrecked cars last May?"
""Not me, you mean the freeway thing, when all those cars and trucks piled up? I wanted to go, really, thought it sounded enterprising at least, getting out there and casting the whole mess in fiberglass right on the spot, I mean whatsisname, Jough Braun must have been actually cruising the city with a ton of epoxy—imagine getting an actual body in there!"
For the full thrill-ride of a review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
March 19, 2020
Some thoughts while reading
Thought 1
This book needed an editor, someone brave enough to tell Sladek he's just beating around the bush. Characters are constantly rambling about inconsequential rubbish - maybe some of it is related, but who cares? There are some interesting discussions and plot points between characters that I was interested in - Fong, Sonnechein - but those characters never developed, and those few good parts are instead surrounded by even more rubbish. This book should have been a short-story leading into the sequel.
Thought 2
Roderick. Like Wall-E but less cute, less funny, and less interesting.
Thought 3
The best satire takes itself seriously, but you never get the sense that Sladek takes his own story seriously. When Roderick gets out into the world, adults treat him like a normal human being, but children see through the "charade" and beat him up on the playground for being different; these could have made for some incredibly powerful scenes ranging from the stupidity of adults to the cruelty of children, but often these scenes have no lasting power or growth, they come and go... and now Roderick's in the hands of someone new...
Thought 4
There is a good story here, but none of Sladek's constantly babbling characters and wasted scenes do anything to enhance or develop that plot. It's all just an exercise in excess. Look at how thin a book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is, yet it succeeds brilliantly by not wasting jokes, and structuring scenes for maximum effect.
Thought 1
This book needed an editor, someone brave enough to tell Sladek he's just beating around the bush. Characters are constantly rambling about inconsequential rubbish - maybe some of it is related, but who cares? There are some interesting discussions and plot points between characters that I was interested in - Fong, Sonnechein - but those characters never developed, and those few good parts are instead surrounded by even more rubbish. This book should have been a short-story leading into the sequel.
Thought 2
Roderick. Like Wall-E but less cute, less funny, and less interesting.
Thought 3
The best satire takes itself seriously, but you never get the sense that Sladek takes his own story seriously. When Roderick gets out into the world, adults treat him like a normal human being, but children see through the "charade" and beat him up on the playground for being different; these could have made for some incredibly powerful scenes ranging from the stupidity of adults to the cruelty of children, but often these scenes have no lasting power or growth, they come and go... and now Roderick's in the hands of someone new...
Thought 4
There is a good story here, but none of Sladek's constantly babbling characters and wasted scenes do anything to enhance or develop that plot. It's all just an exercise in excess. Look at how thin a book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is, yet it succeeds brilliantly by not wasting jokes, and structuring scenes for maximum effect.
January 18, 2023
Could've been a fantastic metaphor for growing up neurodivergent/autistic (and at points it genuinely showed promise there) but it's unfortunately kneecapped by the time & place it was written in, IMO. Casual racism is thrown around like it's nothing (holy shit, the jive-talking NASA engineer who flies a stolen fighter jet into a mountain to evade consequences. jesus christ, the family of [g-slur]s who literally drive around in a van stealing things to sell to support their massive neglected family. what the fuck, Sladek?). Every character apart from Roderick (and, due to outside influence, frequently including him) is the worst example of an absolute self-centered piece of shit, each piece separate and unique in its own way but still fucking putrid and why are you even looking this closely at it? It's a shit. There's really no love for humanity or kindness or anything but brute-force cynicism and that certain Gen X "fuck everybody, I'm the only smart one" mentality that aged about as well as your teenage angst-vent poetry.
August 6, 2024
The premise of the story is that a NASA employee tricked professors at a college to work on making a robot supposedly for NASA. But he actually used it as a means to siphon off money for himself. After the scandal breaks, the robot (whose mind is then no more than that of a toddler) ends up in a series of homes and schools. Along the way, he does observe and learn, while also being puzzled by some things in society.
Essentially, it seems, Roderick the robot is the "mechanism" around which Sladek satirizes colleges, government, schools, religion, business, etc. As the adults around Roderick bumble or act strangely, he tries to understand and explain to them what he thinks. A significant part of the book takes place without Roderick actively "in the room." Some of the scenes in which Roderick has the most active role are when he's in the office with a priest trying to convince Roderick he can't be a robot and must declare he was made by God rather than by men.
Essentially, it seems, Roderick the robot is the "mechanism" around which Sladek satirizes colleges, government, schools, religion, business, etc. As the adults around Roderick bumble or act strangely, he tries to understand and explain to them what he thinks. A significant part of the book takes place without Roderick actively "in the room." Some of the scenes in which Roderick has the most active role are when he's in the office with a priest trying to convince Roderick he can't be a robot and must declare he was made by God rather than by men.
November 23, 2020
Roderick is a robot, the project that created him funded by mistake, orphaned at a young age and tossed around and abused before Ma and Pa Wood take him in. He's a sweet kid but struggles with things like catechism ("Who made you?" "I'm pretty sure it was Danny Sonnenschein."
I read this back in high school--or maybe early college--and loved it. It holds up fairly well, especially and most surprisingly Sladek's descriptions of the outputs of sub-Roderick AI and the types of mistakes it'd make, which could be modern anecdotes of deep learning not quite getting things right. He also loves word play, golden age mysteries, and math puzzles, all of which make appearances.
I read this back in high school--or maybe early college--and loved it. It holds up fairly well, especially and most surprisingly Sladek's descriptions of the outputs of sub-Roderick AI and the types of mistakes it'd make, which could be modern anecdotes of deep learning not quite getting things right. He also loves word play, golden age mysteries, and math puzzles, all of which make appearances.
July 30, 2022
In 1980 this satire may have been regarded as innovatively offbeat with its frenetic zany prose and playful questioning of Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, but I found it hard going. Peppered with puns, malapropisms, literary and contemporary cultural references and word vomit paragraphs its disjointed narrative provides a loose framework for the author’s acerbic commentary on various aspects of American life, with the passive innocent abroad robot protagonist experiencing a series of unfortunate events, many of which are amusing. There is a sequel, Roderick at Random, which I will read. Tik-Tok, published three years later is shorter and far superior.
July 21, 2023
(Waffling between 3 and 3.5 stars) My advice for this novel is to get out your notebook. Sladek bounces around between characters quite a bit and you'll often only get a small hint that a character is recurring. Once you lockdown the task of keeping up with it, it is sharp yet farcical commentary in line with what you'd see from Brunner, Disch, Heller, Vonnegut, etc. I just didn't enjoy myself reading this as I did reading the best from those other authors.
July 12, 2021
I couldn't get past the first chapter and its inane, meaningless dialogue. Another review said that the plot doesn't really develop until after the first 100 pages. My apologies for not having the patience to slog that far into the story.
May 11, 2020
Excellent book, very imaginative, unique premise - highly recommended.
December 1, 2023
Rambling, incoherent, not very good
September 26, 2017
A dialogue driven story focused more on satire and humour than the sci-fi elements that underpin it.
Things move at a very slow pace for the first hundred pages or so as Sladek details (quite obliquely) the construction and dubious origins of Roderick the robot. Rather than saying things outright, Sladek seems intent on keeping the narrator's voice to an absolute minimum throughout the book, leaving the reader to piece together information through the idiosyncratic discussions of his generally self-centered and narcissistic characters. This isn't necessarily the wrong approach, but it does render the first hundred pages or so a little dull and tedious to read through. Characters are constantly talking over top of one another, rarely (if ever) does a conversation go by where someone isn't interrupted by the person they're talking to.
There isn't quite enough humour in these earlier pages to justify or redeem the slow pace as Sladek relies largely on interactions between characters that all have virtually identical traits and so things become quite repetitive until Roderick and his adoptive parents, Ma and Pa are introduced. That's where the patience pays off. With the exception of Roderick, Ma and Pa are the only characters with any real redeeming qualities as they actually show some kind of empathy for their son. They are remarkably (and humorously) ignorant, to the extent that neither even understand where babies come from.
The strongest scenes, for me, are when Roderick is being a bit more active in events. This happens largely in the middle third of the novel when Roderick attends first a public school where he fights against class mates and compromises the school's automated systems and then is later shipped off to a Catholic school where his incessant questions have him deadlocked in theological and ontological conversations with one of the priests. During these parts of the story, Roderick takes centre stage and the disparities between his naivete and physical differences play off hilariously against the ignorant and self-obsessed pupils and teachers that populate the schools (and essentially every other institution).
A lot of Sladek's humour is satirical and focused on established institutions ranging from schools and religion to policing and government where their respective representatives are displayed as inept, avaricious, and utterly confused. Though there is plenty of absurdity in the form of a gypsy kidnapping and a malevolent business venture involving talking food, and these elements help provide a bit of counter balance to the cynical, unrelenting satire and aggressively arrogant characters.
The cast is large with lots of minor characters that appear and disappear and reappear again with the various plot threads interacting and criss-crossing throughout. For a first read through, it does become hard to keep track of and the arrogance that virtually everyone displays does mean characters blend together, though Sladek's reliance on dialogue does help differentiate to a certain degree, at least for the main players anyway.
This is a book largely redeemed by its second act which provides a great balance between fleshed out characters, humour, satire, dialogue and action while the beginning and end tend to steer away from these strengths, coming across as slow and unfocused. If I were to rate each of the three acts as separate pieces, the scores would be as follows:
Act 1 = 2 stars
Act 2 = 5 stars
Act 3 = 3.5 stars
While the execution is a bit of a mixed bag at times, it's nevertheless great to see a sci-fi story that is legitimately funny and that puts in so much effort to characterisation and expressing at least some of its ideas with subtlety instead of relying on two-dimensional characters and a transparent plot.
Things move at a very slow pace for the first hundred pages or so as Sladek details (quite obliquely) the construction and dubious origins of Roderick the robot. Rather than saying things outright, Sladek seems intent on keeping the narrator's voice to an absolute minimum throughout the book, leaving the reader to piece together information through the idiosyncratic discussions of his generally self-centered and narcissistic characters. This isn't necessarily the wrong approach, but it does render the first hundred pages or so a little dull and tedious to read through. Characters are constantly talking over top of one another, rarely (if ever) does a conversation go by where someone isn't interrupted by the person they're talking to.
There isn't quite enough humour in these earlier pages to justify or redeem the slow pace as Sladek relies largely on interactions between characters that all have virtually identical traits and so things become quite repetitive until Roderick and his adoptive parents, Ma and Pa are introduced. That's where the patience pays off. With the exception of Roderick, Ma and Pa are the only characters with any real redeeming qualities as they actually show some kind of empathy for their son. They are remarkably (and humorously) ignorant, to the extent that neither even understand where babies come from.
The strongest scenes, for me, are when Roderick is being a bit more active in events. This happens largely in the middle third of the novel when Roderick attends first a public school where he fights against class mates and compromises the school's automated systems and then is later shipped off to a Catholic school where his incessant questions have him deadlocked in theological and ontological conversations with one of the priests. During these parts of the story, Roderick takes centre stage and the disparities between his naivete and physical differences play off hilariously against the ignorant and self-obsessed pupils and teachers that populate the schools (and essentially every other institution).
A lot of Sladek's humour is satirical and focused on established institutions ranging from schools and religion to policing and government where their respective representatives are displayed as inept, avaricious, and utterly confused. Though there is plenty of absurdity in the form of a gypsy kidnapping and a malevolent business venture involving talking food, and these elements help provide a bit of counter balance to the cynical, unrelenting satire and aggressively arrogant characters.
The cast is large with lots of minor characters that appear and disappear and reappear again with the various plot threads interacting and criss-crossing throughout. For a first read through, it does become hard to keep track of and the arrogance that virtually everyone displays does mean characters blend together, though Sladek's reliance on dialogue does help differentiate to a certain degree, at least for the main players anyway.
This is a book largely redeemed by its second act which provides a great balance between fleshed out characters, humour, satire, dialogue and action while the beginning and end tend to steer away from these strengths, coming across as slow and unfocused. If I were to rate each of the three acts as separate pieces, the scores would be as follows:
Act 1 = 2 stars
Act 2 = 5 stars
Act 3 = 3.5 stars
While the execution is a bit of a mixed bag at times, it's nevertheless great to see a sci-fi story that is legitimately funny and that puts in so much effort to characterisation and expressing at least some of its ideas with subtlety instead of relying on two-dimensional characters and a transparent plot.
May 17, 2015
This is an incredibly witty, incredibly touching novel that portrays the life of a robt named Roderick and how he copes with life and essentially goring up. As an allegory for the human condition this manages to be largely successful and really shows us how people treat each other because of their differences. Those who expect thsi to be a serious discussion may be disappointed, in spite of the serious topic the novel attempts to address.
May 12, 2015
It needs a lot more fish if you ask me. 
December 8, 2015
I definitely didn't 'get' this book and had to really force myself to finish it. The writing style is bizarre and unnecessary, and 70% of the book reads like utter nonsense.
May 31, 2016
A comedy satire about a young robot. Fairly good but pretty unfocused, scattershot would be a good word to describe it.
June 8, 2016
"Roderick" has its own style. Satire, irony, jumps, cuts, unfinished sentences, they all build up a story enjoyable to read although a bit "off" sometimes.
May 8, 2016
人工知能というか意識を持ったロボットが世間に放たれたらどうなるのか、ロデリックの意識とは、人間が人間であることの証明やロボットが人間ではないことの証明など、哲学的なことを考えさせられる。そもそも文体というかストーリ展開が独特で、自分には少々難しかった。続編が未訳であるのだけど、それと合わせて読むのがいいらしいので、続編が翻訳されたら改めて本書に挑戦するかもしれない。
April 25, 2017
Satire where an innocent Robot tries to make his way in the world of humans
January 16, 2018
done great wacky writing, but the plot was lacking
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