Robert Shea 7 min read

They had come to pass judgement on Rod Rankin, who had broken their law deliberately, 'Our people will be arriving to visit us today,' the ten-foot robot grated, and Rankin snapped, 'Shut up!'

Robert Shea's 1960 story is a wry AI-and-social-SF tale of a stubborn man and his machines. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where a cantankerous planter surrounded by dutiful, literal-minded robots runs afoul of their law, and the helpful robots of the title prove more than he bargained for.

In its time

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

Reading it

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