Aye, numbnuts

Noel Vera

Isaac Asimov's short story collection "I, Robot"--the title slapped
on by an editor despite Asimov's objections (or so he claimed) that
it was already the title of a short by Earl and Otto
(a.k.a. "Eando") Binder, the first of their Adam Link stories--
represents some of the finest writings of his early career. Asimov
seemed to work best in the short story format anyway, where clear
prose and a surprise twist sufficed to elevate a tale (especially in
this genre) into classic status. That's what the stories were--a
series of vignettes with O. Henry endings, designed to test one or
another aspect of Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics;" other than the
twists or the Three Laws, you'd be hard put to say what was so
special.

Heresy? I suppose. Asimov was a "no-feel, no-touch" kind of writer,
dedicated to the proposition that science fiction was more about
science than about fiction, more about ideas than sights, sounds,
scents, sensibility. Maybe his most famous work is the Foundation
series, novellas cobbled together into novels (three at first with a
line of sequels to follow, a common practice in the genre), and
while practically everyone can remember the plot (group of
scientists establish the Second Galactic Empire) or gimmick that
drove it (psycho-history), ask them what the books were really like,
and all you'll get is a blank stare ("Well, there were all these
scientists with the funny names…and I remember a lot of
corridors…"). And psycho-history, a super-science supposedly able to
predict human action thousands of years into the future and the
basis for these novels, is hardly based on human reality, on the way
people actually think or feel: the most complete explanation Asimov
gave us as to how it worked compared people to gas molecules, the
movements of which are predictable when taken in totality.
Unsurprising metaphor, considering Asimov was a biochemist, and that
the average Asimov character has all the uniqueness and spontaneity
of a gas molecule.

The Robot series are somewhat better, partly because Asimov felt a
genuine (and rather telling) fondness for robots, and partly because
a good chunk of it was made up of short stories (his best Robot
novel was probably his first--"Caves of Steel" where the description
of gargantuan enclosed cities as steel wombs are a nightmare--
daydream, in his case, he was a claustrophile--vision of his native
New York City pushed to the nth level). Then there are the Three
Laws, which cement (at least, in his mind) the idea that robots are
benign beings, meant to serve mankind--in stark contrast to all the
malevolent machines stalking the pages of science-fiction magazines
of the time.

Actually the Three Laws, while elegantly written, are hardly
ironclad logic. Most of Asimov's stories turn on the many loopholes
in the laws; John Sladek (a far better writer, in my opinion) has
his robot protagonist Roderick pick the Laws apart in one of the
funnier chapters in his "Roderick" novels, and in his short
story "Broot Force," supposedly written by "I-click As-I-move" (most
of the flaws involved interpretation--what if, for example, the
robot decided that he was a human being, and that he needn't take
orders from anybody?).

So while the majority of film critics are slamming Alex Proyas'
adaptation of "I, Robot" as being unfaithful or coming up short to
the intellectual level of Asimov's stories, I'm wondering what in
the world are they talking about, or if they've actually read Asimov
(Roger Ebert, who shows his authoritative knowledge by posting the
Three Laws at the beginning of his review, is perhaps the most
egregious example). Asimov is hardly high literature, more like
something you take up in high school and put aside with semi-fond
memories for the rest of your life. Any change made to the stories--
any shift towards the human, the down-to-earth, the palpable--can
only be an improvement.

Will Smith's police officer Del Spooner, for example--he's not just
black, a race that's all but invisible in Asimov's stories (not
because they're not there, but because Asimov's powers of
characterization are so poor), he's loudly and aggressively (if
charmingly) so. Smith is the human corrective to Asimov's antiseptic
vision of a clean, featureless world of plastic and metal; he just
has to dip his fingers into one of an endless series of pumpkin pies
he's always carrying with him and you know Asimov's spinning in his
grave ("A pie! Fingered in one of my stories!"). Even his impromptu
asides are funnier than anything Asimov's ever come up with (Asimov
loves to tell rather bland "racy" jokes--one title among his two
hundred-plus books is "The Sensuous Dirty Old Man"). Smith carries
this movie on his limber shoulders; he treats Asimov's lumbering,
rather outdated ideas as the obsolescent models they really are,
leaving them far behind in the whirlwind of the action-movie plot
(written by Jeff Vintar and Akiva Goldsman, based on a previous
screenplay that has little to do with Asimov's book, or the famous,
never-used Harlan Ellison script made out of the book).

Maybe the only one who keeps up with Smith (Bridget Moynihan as
Asimov's beloved robopsychologist Susan Calvin, Bruce Greenwood as
U.S. Robot's chief executive, and James Cromwell as the scientist
who formulates the Three Laws serve mostly as plot functions) is
Alan Tudyk, who lends his voice (and certain facial features) to the
robot Sonny. Sonny is the one robot built to defy the Three Laws, to
(a unique characteristic among not just Asimov's robots but
characters) actually think for himself; the movie takes a page out
of Asimov's "Caves of Steel" and partners Sonny with Smith's
detective in a race to solve a murder and, along the way, save
mankind.

Alex Proyas, who directs, has done better work: his "Dark City" is a
stylishly noirish takeoff from yet another (and yet again far
better) science-fiction writer, Philip K. Dick (particularly Dick's
short story "Adjustment Team"); here he's working with lesser
material, and the resulting images are unsurprisingly less
evocative. He does, however, put a visual finger on just what was
most unsettling about Asimov's robots: their ubiquitousness (someone
says there is one robot for every five people in the world), and
their anonymity. At one point a renegade robot hides amongst a crowd
of a thousand robots (an incident taken from one of Asimov's more
entertaining--maybe because it's written more like a thriller than a
mystery--short stories, "Little Lost Robot"); Proyas camera bores in
close on one of their face, trying to winkle out a trace of
individuality, of human expression. Nothing--like peering into a
mirror with human features. Whatever is going on inside
that "positronic" (a nonsense term Asimov coined from an atomic
particle) brain remains completely unknown to you; the best you can
do is project less comforting thoughts of your own.

(First published in Businessworld, 7/23/04)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)