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Roderick Vol 1

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Jean Harlow (as Kitty Pachard): I read this book... the man says machines are going to take over every profession!

Marie Dressler (as Carlotta Vance): (Looks her over) My dear, you've got nothing to worry about.

Just one of the dry and appropriate quotations the renownedly erudite Sladek uses to pepper the chapter headings in this brilliant book about a very human machine in a dehumanised world full of mechanical people. Roderick is a learning machine - the product of a highly experimental artificial intelligence project at the University of Minnetonka. But the project's funding is under threat and their leading genius is on the verge of mental breakdown. Roderick escapes and is adopted, bought or just kidnapped by one after another crazy person - beginning with a disfunctional couple who neglect him. He starts to learn all about the world from TV, and begins the long process of trying to work the whole thing out using his (as you would expect) powerfully logical brain. He is forced to work in a fairground by the scary Mr Kratt, comes across a sinister corporate conspiracy, and is eventually adopted by the warm-hearted, but extremely eccentric Ma and Pa Wood who teach him human values and try to get his body sorted out for him. If the story sounds a bit like the "Wizard of Oz" or "The Brave Little Toaster" believe me it isn't - well I suppose it is a bit, but it's also full of dark humour, weird characters and hilarious situations. There's beautifully observed school scenes, and an unforgettable theological discussion with a very worried priest. There's the story of Abraham and Isaac as a flow chart, and lots of strange little codes and puzzles to work out. There's obsessive artists, craven academics, moronic TV shows and general satirising of all the crass things we've come to accept as inescapable parts of modern life in the twenty years since the book was written. Together with its sequal "Roderick at Random", "Roderick" - one of David Pringle's "Science Fiction: One Hundred Best Novels" - is a fitting memorial to a great modern satirist who died in March this year.