Fritz Leiber 12 min read

Robie the sales-robot rolls onto Times Square to hawk his wares, on the day the sirens sound.

Fritz Leiber's sharp little 1953 story sets a cheerful, emotionless vending-machine-on-legs loose among the crowds and neon of a near-future Manhattan, tirelessly pursuing customers as the news of a 'Hot Truce' scrawls overhead. Then catastrophe strikes, and Robie keeps right on selling. A cold, brilliant satire of consumerism and automation that lets its machine's indifference deliver the gut-punch. Read it for Leiber at his most economical and cutting, and a final image you won't forget.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

12 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).