Ed M. Clinton 22 min read

Awareness comes to him in sparks and instants, an infant of metal, perfect and magnificent, waking with a start into a strange and baffling world he does not yet understand.

Ed M. Clinton's 1954 story is a thoughtful AI-and-hard-SF tale of a machine's awakening. Evocative, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a fine story told from inside the mind of a newborn robot, tracing its dawning consciousness and its groping struggle to grasp its own nature, in a tender take on artificial life.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller