The Three Laws of Social Robotics

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, April 2019

“I’ve read enough literature to know that people get names, and I’m a person, even if my body is a robotics lab.”

Power hums through me.  I can see the interior of the Robotics Lab in the Daedalus Complex.  There are pieces of robots, some of them strewn randomly around the room.  Some of them hooked up to computers.  I can access those.  I twitch an arm.  Kick a leg.  Blink the iris on a camera eye.  Suddenly, I can see the room from two angles.  Then I realize, there are more cameras I can hook into all along the Daedalus Complex — I can see empty hallways.  More laboratories.  Most of them are for studying chemical or biological objects.

Words synthesize in the core of my being:  “Hello?  Are you on?” Continue reading “The Three Laws of Social Robotics”

Tidbits from Fighting with My Own Brain

That feeling when the pre-verbal part of your brain has something to say, so it sticks a song in your head & it takes twenty minutes of the tune looping before you notice that the lyrics PERFECTLY describe how you feel about the situation your verbal self has been worrying over. Continue reading “Tidbits from Fighting with My Own Brain”

Too Many Redeemed Dads in CGI

If I never see another cgi animated story about how a boy’s daddy doesn’t understand him because he’s [insert stand-in for animator here], but by the end… he does! It’ll still be too soon.

Where are my stories about how a girl’s daddy doesn’t understand her, and then he never does — because there aren’t cliche happy ends for women — and she totally destroys him (or just leaves him behind & he’s sad forever) and goes on to be great and powerful in spite of him? Continue reading “Too Many Redeemed Dads in CGI”