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Cory Doctorow's 'I, Robot' Posted
maxentius writes "A bunch of new stuff has been posted to The Infinite Matrix , reports editor Eileen Gunn, including a new 15,000- word short story from Cory Doctorow entitled 'I, Robot.' Other new additions include material from Howard Waldrop and Patrick O'Leary."
Next week, read the first installment of Cory's brand new fantasy epic, "The Lord Of The Rings"
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I got distracted by the robot sculpture after reading the word "Capeesh?" in the story, and stopped reading. Can someone summarize what this story is about?
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
15,000 word story, of which 12,000 are dedicated to the joys of Converse.
Next he will be sued by Asimov's estate for violation of his Intellectual Property.
Where have I heard that title before?
RobotBox - Robot projects from around the world
The working title that I have for Cory Doctorow's Biography is "You, Plagiarist".
Must be easy to get attention for your short stories when you give them names that were formerly used for best selling novels and blockbuster movies.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Is it an official fork of the Asimov book?
I realize it's asking a lot, but if people would either READ the ARTICLE or scroll way way to the bottom, they'd see this:
About this story, Cory says, "Last spring, in the wake of Ray Bradbury pitching a tantrum over Michael Moore appropriating the title of 'Fahrenheit 451' to make Fahrenheit 9/11, I conceived of a plan to write a series of stories with the same titles as famous sf shorts, which would pick apart the toalitarian [sic] assumptions underpinning some of sf's classic narratives."
Yes, the title is on purpose. Of course if people did that, there would be no discussions here, would there?
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
Intellectual Properties.
IC London IC France. I See $1=.8127Euro.
And. Isaac Asimovs' Grandmother's underPants.
It is the truth. You do not know how to speak Enlgish.
Free Scotland!
Arturo Icaza de Arana-Goldberg, Police Detective Third Grade, United North American Trading Sphere, Third District, Fourth Prefecture, Second Division (Parkdale) had had many adventures in his distinguished career, running crooks to ground with an unbeatable combination of instinct and unstinting devotion to duty.
This man's writing is so amazingly stilted even reading the first paragraph makes me cringe in horror. For the love of my life, I can't understand the Slashdot infatuation with him. Everything I've ever seen by him has been awful even by pulp SF standards.
It's 'cause Asimow didn't listen to me and made his X11-style license instead. That, of course, would allow any fool^Wauthor to copy, modify, merge, and do a whole bevy of things with their work. Maybe now Cory GPLed it so Asimov can't get his code--uh, story--back. I do wonder why they don't cite sources these days after all the crap they give us in college...
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
>"You can meet many former 'homosexuals'; you
>will never meet a former 'African-American'." - >Legislating Morality
I hope not. Of course, I'm old enough that Michael Jackson probably wouldn't be interested.
His readings are a fixture at Armadillocon in Austin, Texas. The important thing is that he has a redneck flavor of science fiction, so read his stuff with a heavy southern accent for the proper effect.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
That I wrote the names of famous baseball players on paper and sold it to kids telling them that it was a genuine autograph.
Okay, I didn't really do that.
Maybe I should have.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Someone called SCO just called. They said something about patenting your story and then threatening to sue everyone who reads Isaac Asimov, I don't know.
I do like the way he's dissected some of the ideas in Asimov.
It's just a shame his writing style is stilted and ungainly.
I've liked bit of his writing, and a fair few of his ideas, but a great writer he aint.
My Journal
"Haul ass, young lady -- out of bed, on your feet, shit-shower-shave, or I swear to God, I will beat you purple and shove you out the door jaybird naked. Capeesh?"
...
the preceding paragraph reads:
No amount of policeman's devotion and skill availed him when it came to making his twelve-year-old get ready for school, though.
He has a great idea for an excuse delivery system though... good story.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
conceived of a plan to write a series of stories with the same titles as famous sf shorts, which would pick apart the toalitarian assumptions underpinning some of sf's classic narratives
Apparently - again - idiotism can lead to success in this world. Fair 'nuff, but how come I can't possibly pass around far enough to avoid these things ? Never mind.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Well according to his footnote:
About this story, Cory says, "Last spring, in the wake of Ray Bradbury pitching a tantrum over Michael Moore appropriating the title of 'Fahrenheit 451' to make Fahrenheit 9/11, I conceived of a plan to write a series of stories with the same titles as famous sf shorts, which would pick apart the toalitarian assumptions underpinning some of sf's classic narratives."
Sounds like it very well MIGHT be. After Sci-Fi clearly fantasy is the next step in unimaginative satire--
The Wolfkin
" For someone testing to see if he's going to get in trouble for copying the titles of other stuff"
Which sounds really scary until you realize you can't copyright titles.
But your heart was in the right place.
The word robot comes from the Czech word for labor. This is Old Europe! FB!!!
http://www.locusmag.com/2005/Issues/01Doctorow.ht
I already saw the movie! Yeesh.
(Note for the humor impaired: Yes, I know)
I like Howard's non-fiction as well as his fiction, which is one of the reasons I wrote some movie reviews with him:
- Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
- The Fabulous World of Jules Verne.
- The Incredibles
(Actually, Howard, Cory and I are all in the Turkey City Writer's Workshop together.Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
...is to determine the origins of the word "I" and determine how it relates to all book titles that contain it.
Most people think you can copyright a title. You can't. You can't copyright a concept either. All you can copyright is a block of words - a poem, a story, a book, a screenplay, whatever.
If I want to write a story titled "I, Robot" about a guy who chases down rogue robots, I could. I could even make a movie based on the story (starring Will Smith, if I wanted). That's not breaking the law. Of course, Asimov's estate could sue me arguing that I was somehow riding on their glory and stealing bread from their mouths, and a jury might award them some money. That's a totally different matter.
For those who might be interested:
;-)
Names titles and short literary phrases are not protected by copyright. Single literary titles are also not necessarily protected by trademark.
However, as with most law, there are cases where a title can be protected (unfair competition, trademark common law if the title has acquired secondary meaning).
The rash of teen movies that are simply titled by appropriating the name of a popular song should be evidence of this enough.
About this story, Cory says, "Last spring, in the wake of Ray Bradbury pitching a tantrum over Michael Moore appropriating the title of 'Fahrenheit 451' to make Fahrenheit 9/11, I conceived of a plan to write a series of stories with the same titles as famous sf shorts, which would pick apart the toalitarian [sic] assumptions underpinning some of sf's classic narratives."
And of course Asimov's title was, in turn,
a riff on Robert Graves' I, Claudius.
But that case is quite different from both Doctorow's i, robot and Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, inasmuch as Asimov's I, Robot is a quite brilliant work of art in its own right.
Please remind me, why exactly is this front page Slashdot news?
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
So what's the reason for this story? Are we going to start getting postings here every time Strange Horizons updates or there's a new issue of Asimov's?
Admitedly, there is nothing new under the sun but some things are much fresher than others. Is this the sort of creativity we can expect from loosening up copyright? Parodies, satires, mashups, mixups, etc. I'll probably be modded down but I simply want to know.
that's 15,496 words in fact.
I posted an outline for an animated feature film, titled "Woopster, the Iron Rooster", along with a simple drawing on my blog at: http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/, if my fellow Slashdotters don't mind taking a look. It's about a robot chicken, by the way.
Sun and Fun
I'm not entirely sure who Cory Doctorow is, but I approve of anything that forces Isaac Asimov to dab on facial egg for those asinine "Three Laws of Robotics," up to and including Terminator 3.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
I mean, if I write a book and call it "Foundation", set it in a SF universe and talk about psyhohistory, it would be purely coincidental, right?
What about a short story written by a leader of the Free Software Foundation, set in a speculative fiction universe where incumbent publishers of works of authorship control what computers are allowed to do, and mentioning the history of how minds worked before the publishers gained control? Then you'd have this.
HEre yOU caN doWNLoaD tHE fuLL MoVIe::::
http://www.djtouvan.com/
Actually, I've met a former African-American. He's an African-European now.
p.s. bite me.
..By Isinc Ahadenov
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Who is Cory? Eh, Go Google, is slashdot your mama or something?
I read much more of Cory on BoingBoing.net, if you are addicted to Slashdot, and haven't heard of BoingBoing, you owe it to yourself to check it out-- the editors of the site pull geekish headlines and pointers for you, it is just without all the interactive commentary from people who didn't RTFA.
Cory is good like Gibson and PK Dick are good while his stories are ostensiably about the future - they really are moral dillemas for now.
His stories are exponential extensions of the things which have their seeds in now. He is saying, "If we don't stop this stuff it'll end up that bad".
Totalitarian Dystopia.
PK Dick really realised that machines will piss you off and robots will invade your life, argue with you about liscense fees and project adverts into your car.
Gibson shows how machines can be used to oppress and as tools of liberation.
Asimov however really just thought everything would turn out really great and robots will be so helpful and huge global monopolies will try to do the right thing.
So the story is named after the Asimov story because it says hey man Global Monopolies don't play fair, machines can be used to oppress, less'n you tweak and hack them to do what you want.
And I don't agree his writing is stilted, it packs a bit of the adrenal puch of Gibson Work that keeps you reading.
- Everyman
On the page where the story actually appears, http://www.infinitematrix.net/stories/shorts/i-rob ot.html --the title is written "i, robot" and not "I, Robot." I find this change updates the flavor of the title into the modern era, the Day of Blog.
and robots that _don't_ have these laws built into them as motivational imperitaves are just plain scary.
Go rent "Robocop" or "Saturn 3" or "2001" or "Collosus: The Forbin Project" or any of about a million other bad robot / bad computer movies if you doubt this. The trouble _always_ starts with violation of the three laws.
I don't see police work being one of the initial, or even second-tier, applications that robots will be deployed into. Surveillance, maybe, but police do one helluva lot more than that. Even surveillance might be dodgy: if you got wise to a robot following you, and you told it to Sod Off, it would have to prioritize your order against the orders of its sender. Complex at best, I don't like it.
Neither did Isaac, his detective was human, charged with getting to the bottom of WTF was up with the robots and the subtle conflicts of their programming.
Well, that's my $.02.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Nothing more to see here, I'm speechless for once...
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
I applaud Cory's practice of releasing his books for Free. I share some of his views and concerns, but his writing is very poor. His "I, Robot" is a contrived and lame story, quickly slapped together to push Cory's agenda. The literary merits of it are next to none, so don't bother reading it (sadly, I read all of it).
There aren't many interesting ideas there either. Cory tries to make a point that implementing 3 laws of robotics goes hand in hand with building up a totalitarian state, but ignoring these precautions would somehow make all robots moral and friendly and allow science to progress and flourish, bringing humans uploading, complete lack of crime and other goodies.
While I am not going to argue that uploading rules and running several copies of a mind can be good, this books makes a piss poor job of arguing these points. Better ignore it. I hope that it's eventually released under some CC license and it can be rewritten by a better author.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.