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."

Comments

Catchy Title...

[gowen]

Next week, read the first installment of Cory's brand new fantasy epic, "The Lord Of The Rings"

Re:IP

[OzRoy]

Except that the original "I, Robot" short story was not written by Asimov, but by a guy named Eando Binder in 1939.

GPL'd story?

[Aneurysm]

Is it an official fork of the Asimov book?

Re:I'm writing Cory Doctorow's Biography

[OzRoy]

Well it's a trick that seemed to work for Isaac Asimov. The original "I, Robot" was a short story written by Eando Binder. Isaac Asimov was apparently appaled when he learned that his collection was going to be renamed from "Mind and Iron" to "I, Robot".

The title

[MadChicken]

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?

Re:cool robot scultpture

[iapetus]

Can someone summarize what this story is about?

Robots.

You're welcome.

Oh god, not again

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Oh god, not again

[Sandor at the Zoo]

Everything I've ever seen by him has been awful even by pulp SF standards.

Pro: Cory's stories (heh, a rhyme!) nail geekdom. My favorite is from 0wnz0red, in which the main character's CVS submit permissions are yanked. It's funny, for geeks.

Con: Every main character in every one of Cory's stories that I've read is a whiny SOB. In "I, Robot", the main character only cries once, which means that Cory's getting better.

Seriously, I hate everyone one of Cory's main characters. They're either whiny put-upon crybabies, or they're taken advantage of by their best friends/wives/other, or usually both. To me, that's the one thing keeping me from really liking Cory's writing. Yeah, the prose needs work, but that will get better with practice. Just stop making charactes that I hate reading about!

Re:IP

[Eric Giguere]

If the Asimov estate sued, he'd just have to point them to the issue of Asimov's where Isaac himself stated that you can't copyright titles. Now, an argument could be made for trademarking titles in certain circumstances, but in general a title doesn't qualify for protection.

References:

• Copyright protection not available for names, titles, or short phrases
• Protection of literary titles

Eric
Vioxx recall reduces spam (humor)
JavaScript is not Java! (serious)

Mr Doctorow?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Neat Idea - shame about the writing

[samael]

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.

Re:Neat Idea - shame about the writing

[FreeUser]

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.

Give him time. He may not be a [insert your favorite author here], but writing styles do tend to improve with time and practice. Try reading some of the early drafts of famouse authors' early works, and you get the idea.

Re:IP

[AmoHongos]

Except that Eando Binder wasn't just one guy, but the pen name for Earl and Otto Binder.

The reason for the I, Robot title

[Anonymous Coward]

From his interview at Locus magazine:
http://www.locusmag.com/2005/Issues/01Doctorow.htm l

"I gave up short story writing for a while when I started writing novels (which I think every writer does), but I've started doing it again. What spurred me to it was Bradbury going crazy about Fahrenheit 9/11, saying Michael Moore was a crook for having stolen his title. For a champion of free expression, in the original Fahrenheit 451, to assert that the person who comes up with the meme has the right to control the condition as to who can riff on that meme is not just ironic, it's ludicrous! So I started writing a whole batch of new stories that had the same titles as famous science fiction. I've finished an 'Anda's Game' and an 'I, Robot' and my next one might be a 'Jeffty Is Five'. Ellison's original 'Jeffty' is an anti-technological story -- Harlan's an antitechnological guy. He told us at Clarion that we should get offline and stop screwing around (the best advice I ever ignored). I'm just going to play with that for a while and see how it goes. Let a thousand 'Nightfall's bloom!"

Re:IP

[Isao]

But Otto suffered from multiple personalities. One of whom, Emily, thought she was a Czech farmer.