Sol Boren 21 min read

A furious wife drops her suitcase and declares she's leaving, she can't stand the sight of the household android another second, as the tactless machine calmly informs her she is getting quite fat.

Sol Boren's 1956 story is a wry AI-and-social-SF comedy. Fun, clever golden-age SF. Read it for a genial domestic farce about a too-honest household robot whose blunt candor wreaks havoc on a marriage, in a light, well-turned golden-age piece that mines real comedy from the collision of a literal-minded machine with human vanity and feeling.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban