Title: The Positronic Man
Author: Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg
Type: Fiction
Page Count: 226
Rating: 4.25/5
When I ordered this book online, I didn’t realise that it was co-written and thought that it was just an Asimov novel. Then, when I picked it up, I was wondering whether I’d be able to tell which author wrote which parts based upon their voices. That didn’t really happen, and it just read like Asimov’s novels.
I believe it’s also based on Bicentennial Man, which I think I’ve read at some point, but it was long enough ago that I couldn’t remember anything. That meant that other than knowing that it was a robot novel, I went in pretty blind.
That’s actually not a bad shout, and I can give you the information you’ll need to decide whether to read it without too many spoilers. It basically follows a robot who starts to take on ever more human qualities and who eventually tries to prove to the world that he’s a person, even while admitting he’s not a human.
The most interesting parts here are the bits which deal with morality and questions of what exactly it is that makes someone human. That’s where Asimov is at his best, and he really shines here even if it’s actually Silverberg. It doesn’t matter.
