Quote:
Originally Posted by BWinmill
Yet that story wasn't really about the robots. It was about the people. By modifying our definition of a person, we are able to slip into our baser instincts and disregard higher principles. (It was the laws of robotics in that case. Presumably he also meant the laws laid down by governments and religions in the more general sense.)
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Well, if we go with that (perfectly accurate) read, none of the robot stories are about robots. All the robot stories are really about humans and their foibles, from the "Frankenstein complex" of Luddites (the reason he started writing robot stories in the first place), to the sledgehammer message that if *humans* lived by the Three Laws they would in fact be better humans, which he followed up in his latter years by making we-all-know-who the guardian of humanity. (He makes a better Guardian than Multivac, too.)
There are many reasons why his Robot stories resonate so strongly and their veiled ruminations about humanity are just one of them.
For every way anybody can raise about Asimov being overated it is easy to raise several that suggest he is way more *underrated*: as a writer/philosopher.
One could do far worse than to try to live a "Robotic" Three Laws life.
