Harry Harrison 30 min read

In a year when New York is a bad town for robots, the mechanical man Jon Venex rents a hotel room to repair his own leg, and braces for a hard time in a country turning against his kind.

Harry Harrison's 1956 story is a sharp, humane AI-and-social-SF tale. Pointed, engaging golden-age SF. Read it for an early Harrison story of robot prejudice and dignity, following a hard-luck mechanical man through a world of bigotry toward machines, in a lively golden-age parable about rights, work, and the iron velvet glove.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

30 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).