Randall Garrett 1 hr 10 min read

Nobody names a spaceship McGuire on purpose, but this robot-brained ship has a very human weakness.

Randall Garrett's 1961 story introduces MG-YR-7, the first spacecraft fitted with a Yale robotic brain and, inevitably, a personality, christened McGuire by some unsung wit, and prone to the kind of trouble only a too-human machine can cause. Witty, engaging golden-age SF about artificial minds and the bugs in them, narrated with Garrett's easy charm. Read it for a clever, funny take on the thinking-machine story from a reliable magazine craftsman.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

1 hr 10 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Douglas