Charles L. Fontenay 6 min read

'It's a good martini, Herbert, but dammit, I wish you didn't have that everlasting smile.' Herbert, who found silver and made the tray, replies that he cannot alter himself in any way.

Charles L. Fontenay's 1958 story is a wry AI-and-social-SF tale of women and their too-perfect robot servant. Clever, pointed golden-age SF. Read it for a sly story where a household of every luxury a machine can provide leaves its mistresses longing, unexpectedly, for something human.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban