Isaac Asimov’s story Robot Visions is intriguing and interesting on many levels. As a science fiction short story, it is complex, dealing with not only time-travel and humanoid robots but also some very deep philosophical questions. I think the most important of these questions concerns the future without biological humans but with androids living humanely in perfect peace and harmony. This idea of a completely humane utopia without humans has conjured up many disturbing thoughts in my head.
When asked whether I thought this was a horror story or a hopeful story, I said horror for many reasons. Though it is true that the humanoid robots of this future seem to carrying out our human culture in a peaceful future, in my mind, truly human society dies when the last human does. No matter how hard robots try to be like humans, in the end, they are not human. They are robots. They do not have the bodily experiences we do, and thus they could never produce a truly human culture and society. Also, it is human to make mistakes. Utopia (at least in this stage of world history) is nearly impossible for us to achieve. So it is very ‘un-human’ to be living in such a perfect world. As negative as they are, fighting and conflict are a part of the human condition. Sometimes, in fighting, we learn valuable lessons and grow significantly as humans. Indeed, these sentient humanoid robots of the future are obviously persons with the ability to think intelligently, reason and possibly even feel emotions. They would be deserving of respect and rights. Also, if the human race had to die out necessarily, having these robots live out something like human culture would be ideal. However, due to no fault of their own, these androids were made robots and thus could never perfectly imitate the human experience.
Also, I think there is something very fishy (if you will) about this story. First of all, in this idyllic future, what happened to all the humans? The humanoid robots say in the story that there was a ‘sad time,’ after which all the humans disappeared. ‘Sad time’ must be a gross under-exaggeration, for that would have meant that, during one period in history, all 9 billion humans were wiped off the face of the earth. The fact that the robots will not explain what happened during the sad time makes me suspicious. Also, these robots are obviously very intelligent. The narrator robot in the story is able to not warn the humans about their eminent destruction by bending the 1st Law of Robots (we assume) and believing that the robot civilization of the future is more humane then any human society could be. Yet, if these robots are intelligent enough to get around the 1st Law like that, why would the robots even pretend to care about humanity in the future? There are no humans left so it would be very easy to find loopholes in the 1st and 2nd Laws. In fact, even the glimpse the reader gets of the robotic future may not be correct. The humanoid robots knew that Archie, a simpler robot sent by humans from the present, would be coming, so they could have just showed him what they wanted him to see and report back to the humans. In fact, maybe the ‘humane’ future is really anarchic, with robots believing in the value of preserving human civilization are fighting robots who want a culture of their own? Or maybe the future civilization has completely (for all intents and purposes) forsaken humanity and was just covering that up when Archie came? Indeed, when pondered, Robot Stories is a lot more than just a time-travel sci-fi story.
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