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Readers who make their way through Robot Justice may be at a loss to fathom what could have driven someone to write such a book. Indeed, having written the book, I ask myself the same question. I am dumbfounded.
Perhaps, by way of excuse, I can offer a tiny porthole into the shaping of the mind that channeled the book into the universe. As a kid (meaning pre-high school), I raised myself on the Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends along with its Fractured Fairy Tales and zany ensemble cast of characters, Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone, the 1960’s science fiction Outer Limits anthology series and a myriad of other televised lessons teaching me to question authority and my conditioned beliefs, including receiving sublime guidance from that great amphibious icon of disruption, Froggy the Gremlin on Andy’s Gang.
Add to this disturbing cauldron of development, the original 1960’s Lost in Space starring a B-9 model, class YM-3 futuristic robot known only as Robot, the 1956 Forbidden Planet mechanical servant robot who, like me and my friends, actually had a first name, Robby, and the shiny metal intimidating robot who landed with his austere intergalactic alien ambassador on a field in Washington, DC to deliver a species-ending ultimatum to humanity in the 1950’s movie The Day the Earth Stood Still and the cumulative effect on me (while hiding under my desk during duck and cover drills) should be apparent. If you are familiar with The Day the Earth Stood Still, then you’ll understand Judge Daylek’s first name and possibly his last, which is a tip of the hat to those pesky extraterrestrial xenophobic mutant robots bent on universal domination in Dr. Who. In some nefarious underworld of my consciousness, the Great and Honorable Judge Daylek’s DNA is linked directly back to his atomic bomb age kin.
Yes, early Star Trek had a robot for me, too. Though I’m not sure many people would agree. It’s just that he was named, Mr. Spock, and was given pointy ears instead of Robby the Robot’s oversized eye hook screw ears. His personality, or lack thereof, was a clear harbinger of his eventually passing the robot baton to the android, Data, in Star Trek’s next generation of free enterprise space voyaging capitalists.
The introduction of the hybrid robots, the Borg, into the Star Trek universe sealed the robot deal for me. As to colonialists and robots, the Borg always seemed to me to be the flip side of a more intentionally focused Federation, both going where no one wants them to assimilate people who’d prefer to be left alone. I imagine Judge Daylek really admires the Borg and their creative ability to turn diverse biological carbon-based forms into jacked-up machines for whom assimilation is a way of life. “Resistance is futile.” Who doesn’t love that? Haven’t we all felt there is no escaping the black hole cube of death pull? Hey, robots don’t feel that. What justice is there in that for us who have to eat to live?
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