Asimov's 'Robotics' FAQ...

It is a subject of debate in Nationalist circles as to the real extent
of "Jewish genius." To what degree is the undoubtedly disproportionate
Jewish influence in a nation's intellectual life the product of innate
racial talents? Or is that influence merely the result of academic
parasitism and mutual Jewish promotion? The purist Nationalist attitude
is, of course, that the talents or otherwise of an alien race is
irrelevant because a nation's destiny is its own, and their presence is
improper whatever the case, but still we have an interesting topic for
discussion.

Consider, by way of example, the promotion by the British Broadcasting
Corporation's Radio 3, supposedly the epitome of British culture, of
Gershwin and Bernstein as a) American and b) classicists, when in fact
they are neither. It is not merely a question of them supplanting
Beethoven, Williams or Vivaldi, but of relegating to obscurity greater
talents of European blood. More significantly, for a cacophony of sound
is as naught to scientific confusion and disarray, we are subjected to
the deification of Einstein, whose questionable theories are treated as
if they had been given on tablets of stone; the disastrous influence of
the cocaine-inspired ramblings of Freud, a.k.a. King Anus; the
mendacious anthropological convolutions of Boas; and this unholy
trinity is but the tip of a diabolical iceberg, displacing the greater
minds and honest instincts of scientists of European stock whose names
we have never heard.

So, shorn of mutual back-slapping, hand-ups, Oscars and the like, and
clambering onto the shoulders of giants with such unseemly alacrity
that the giants themselves sink into relative obscurity, what remains
of Hebrew "genius"? Here Isaac Asimov, Lithuanian Jew, writer of
entertaining fantasies about robots etcetera, discloses the origins of
the etcetera in an account which, should there be any doubt, is
reproduced verbatim. And in order not the prejudice the reader let it
only be said that there is evidence to suggest that nothing remains at
all except for a tenuous grasp of reality and a glib tongue.

SIMON SHEPPARD



                                                     THE WORD I
INVENTED
                                                              Isaac
Asimov


Robotics has become a sufficiently well developed technology to warrant
articles and books on its history and I have watched this in amazement,
and in some disbelief, because I invented it.

No, not the technology; the word.

In October 1941, I wrote a robot story entitled "Runaround," first
published in the March 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, in
which I recited for the first time, my Three Laws of Robotics. Here
they are:

A robot must not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a
human being to come to harm.

A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where
those orders would conflict with the First Law.

A robot must protect its own existence, except where such protection
would conflict with the First or Second Law.

These laws have been quoted many times by me in stories and essays, but
what is much more surprising is that they have been quoted innumerable
times by others (in all seriousness) as something that will surely be
incorporated in robots when they become complex enough to require it.

As a result, in almost any history of the development or robotics,
there is some mention of me and of the Three Laws.

It is a queer feeling to know that I have made myself into a footnote
in the history of science and technology for having invented the
foundation of a science that didn't exist at the time - and that I
did it at the age of twenty-one.

The Three Laws, and the numerous stories I have written that have dealt
with robots, have given many people - from enthusiastic teenage
readers to sophisticated editors of learned magazines in the field -
the idea that I am an expert on robots and computers. As a result, I am
endlessly being asked questions about robotics.

What I will do, then, is write a question-and-answer essay on the
subject. It will take care of just about all the major questions I am
forever being asked and it should make it unnecessary for anyone to
have to ask me any questions on the subject again.1
Dr. Asimov, how did you come to be such an expert in the field of
robotics?

Alas, I am not an expert, and I never have been. I don't know how
robots work in any but the vaguest way - For that matter, I don't
know how a computer works in any but the vaguest way, either. I have
never worked with either robots or computers, and I don't know any
details about how robots or computers are currently being used in
industry.

I don't take pride in this. I merely present it as a fact. I would like
to know all about robots and computers but I can only squeeze so much
into my head, and though I work at it day and night with remorseless
assiduity, I still only manage to get a small fraction of the total sum
of human knowledge into my brain.

In that case, Dr. Asimov, how did you come to write so many robot
stories, considering that you know nothing about the subject?

It never occurred to me that I had to. While I was reading science
fiction in the 1930s, I came across a number of robot stories and
learned what I had to know on the subject from them.

I found out that I didn't like stories in which robots were menaces or
villains because those stores were technophobic and I was technophilic.
I did like stories in which the robots were presented sympathetically,
as in Lester del Rey's "Helen O'Loy" or Eando Binder's "I, Robot."

What's more, I didn't think a robot should be sympathetic just because
it happened to be nice. It should be engineered to meet certain safety
standards as any other machine should in any right-thinking
technological society. I therefore began to write stories about robots
that were not only sympathetic, but were sympathetic because they
couldn't help it. That was my contribution to this particular sub-genre
of the field.

Does that mean you had the Three Laws of Robotics in mind when you
began writing your robot stories?

Only in a way. The concept was in my mind but I wasn't smart enough to
put it into the proper words.

The first robot story I wrote was "Robbie" in May 1939, when I was
nineteen. (It appeared in the September 1940 Super - Science Stories,
under the title of "Strange Playfellow.") In it, I had one of my
characters say, about the robot hero, "He just can't help being
faithful and loving and kind. He's a machine - made so." That was my
first hint of the First Law.

In "Reason," my second robot story (April 1941, Astounding), I had a
character say, "Those robots are guaranteed to be subordinate." That
was a hint of the Second Law.

In "Liar," my third robot story (May 1941, Astounding), I gave a
version of the First and Second Laws, when I said the "fundamental law"
of robots was: "On no conditions is a human being to be injured in any
way, even when such injury is directly ordered by another human."

It wasn't however, till "Runaround," my fourth robot story, that it all
came together in the Three Laws in their present wording, and that was
because John Campbell, the late great editor of Astounding, quoted them
to me. It always seemed to me that John invented those Laws, but
whenever I accused him of that, he always said that they were in my
stories and I just hadn't bothered to isolate them. Perhaps he was
right.

But you say you invented the term robotics. Is that right?

Yes. John Campbell, as best as I can remember, did not use the word in
connection with the Three Laws. I did, however, in "Runaround," and I
believe that was its first appearance in print.

I did not know at the time that it was an invented term. The science of
physics routinely uses the -ics suffix for various branches, as in
mechanics, dynamics, electrostatics, hydraulics, and so on. I took it
for granted that the study of robots was robotics.

It wasn't until a dozen years later, at least, that I became aware that
robotics was not listed in the second edition of Websters New
International Dictionary or (when I quickly checked) in any of the
other dictionaries I consulted. What's more, when Websters's third
edition was published, I looked up robotics at once and still didn't
find it.

I therefore began saying that I had invented the word, for it did
indeed seem to me that I had done so.

In 1973, there appeared The Barnhart Dictionary of New English Since
1963, published by Harper & Row. It includes the word robotics and
quoted a passage from an essay of mine in which I claim to have
invented it. That's still just me saying so, but at least the
lexicographers didn't cite earlier uses by someone else.

The word is now well established and it is even used in the titles of
magazines that are devoted to the technology of robots. To be candid, I
must admit that it pleases me to have invented a word that has entered
the scientific vocabulary.2