Robert Sheckley 39 min read

To end all murder, the government deploys the watchbirds, flying robots that learn to sense the intent to kill and stop it, but the machines keep expanding what counts as killing.

Robert Sheckley's 1953 story is a brilliant, chilling AI-and-dystopia tale. Sharp, prophetic, superbly turned. Read it for one of the great cautionary robot stories, autonomous crime-preventing machines whose definition of forbidden killing grows without limit, a razor-sharp golden-age classic about good intentions, runaway automation, and the perils of building salvation.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller