spiney
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Are there any more fans - out there - of Jack Williamson's The Humanoids?
I'm not sure if they were intended as a deliberate satire on Asimov's "3 laws of robotics", but in any case they effectively were! The motto: "to serve and obey and protect men from harm" gets taken to ridiculous extremes. For example, humans are not even allow to open doors (which might cause injury!). Anything dangerous is forbidden, and people who don't "find happiness" in a few approved activities are forcibly drugged!
There were only 3 books, 1 novella With Folded Hands, and 2 novels The Humanoids and The Humanoid Touch, but all good.
Jack WIlliamson was one of the first "SF" writers - contemporary with EE (Doc) Smith, and I assumed he was long dead, but he's still alive and writing!
(In the 2 last books, humans fight Humanoids with "psychic powers", irrelevant and unconvincing, and probably influenced by Astounding editor John Campbell's then new-found obsesion with esp, as derived from J B Rhine's books).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Williamson .
www.scifi.com/sfw/issue406/classic.html .
I'm not sure if they were intended as a deliberate satire on Asimov's "3 laws of robotics", but in any case they effectively were! The motto: "to serve and obey and protect men from harm" gets taken to ridiculous extremes. For example, humans are not even allow to open doors (which might cause injury!). Anything dangerous is forbidden, and people who don't "find happiness" in a few approved activities are forcibly drugged!
There were only 3 books, 1 novella With Folded Hands, and 2 novels The Humanoids and The Humanoid Touch, but all good.
Jack WIlliamson was one of the first "SF" writers - contemporary with EE (Doc) Smith, and I assumed he was long dead, but he's still alive and writing!
(In the 2 last books, humans fight Humanoids with "psychic powers", irrelevant and unconvincing, and probably influenced by Astounding editor John Campbell's then new-found obsesion with esp, as derived from J B Rhine's books).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Williamson .
www.scifi.com/sfw/issue406/classic.html .