Russell Burton 13 min read

Riding the commuter train home, Ronald Lovegear of Allied Electronix cradles his burden, the company's most advanced robot, and dreams of the day a machine drives the 5:10 to Philadelphia.

Russell Burton's 1959 story is a wry first-contact and social-SF tale. Clever, warm golden-age SF. Read it for a genial suburban story where a devoted engineer brings a strangely lovable robot home, and the machine proves to have unexpected qualities, in a light, well-turned golden-age piece about invention, affection, and a pet name that's more than it seems.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Tom Beecham