Customer Reviews

Machines That Think: The Best Science Fiction Stories About Robots and Computers

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I found this book in my school library in my freshman year of high school.I checked it out and got partway through,then had to return it.I was hooked,though,and finally found a used copy here on Amazon,which seems to be the only place you can get it now,since it's out of print.That said,it's worth tracking it down and paying S&H and a private seller to get your hands on this book.If you're serious about sci-fi,or have even a moderate interest in AI,this is a requisite.It's a compilation of sci-fi short stories about Artificial Intelligence that ranges in date from the earliest robot story to debate the ethics of the field--"Moxon's Master",written in 1894 by Ambrose Bierce--to classics of and groundbreakers in the genre--with a heavy dose of Asimov,"The Founder of Robotics"--to more modern stories written in the 1970s and 1980s.That's one catch:the book is an old one,so the most recent stories are from right before it was published.However,the book is organized into thematic sections,which is helpful for a disscussion-based reading of the stories.It contains some of the stories you kind of have to read to be considered to know AI sci-fi--several of Asimov's more important ones,two by Philip K Dick,one by Arthur C Clarke and another by Poul Andersen,but a bunch of others as well.The one problem I have with the book is that Asimov is an editor of it,and while he's undoubtedly contributed a plethora of work to the sci-fi genre and a good deal of it is important,I feel he's tooting his own horn too much by giving himself four spaces in this anthology.Otherwise,the pieces in here,while maybe not all well-written overall(a lot of it is pulp sci-fi),contribute important ideas to thinking about AI.