Table Of ContentISAAC
ASIMOV’S
INFERNO
BY ROGER
MacBRIDE
ALLEN
Copyright © 1994
For Isaac
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank the many people who helped this book come into
being. Thanks to my editor, David Harris, for catching gaffes, large and small,
in the first draft, and generally keeping me honest. Thanks to John Betancourt,
and Leigh Grossman of Byron Preiss Visual Publications for keeping me as
informed as possible about the state of play--and to Byron Preiss for making me
diliver. Thanks to Susan Allison, Laura Anne Gilman, and Ginjer Buchanan at
Ace Books, for much appreciated advice and encouragement, and a vast supply
of undeserved patience. Thanks to Eleanore Fox, who put up with a great deal
of typing on the premises when I should have been helping her explore London.
Thanks to my parents, Tom and Scottie Allen, who have always provided me
with both familial and editorial support.
But needless to say, thanks most of all to Isaac Asimov, to whom this
book is dedicated. It would require a volume longer than this one to tell all of
what we owe him. Suffice to say that, without him, there would be no Three
Laws, no robots, no Spacers or Settlers--and no Inferno.
We will miss him.
--Roger MacBride Allen
THE ORIGINAL LAWS OF ROBOTICS
I
A robot May Not Injure a Human Being, or, Through Inaction, Allow a Human
Being to Come to Harm.
II
A Robot Must Obey the Orders Given It by Human Beings Except Where Such
Orders Would Conflict with the First Law.
III
A Robot Must Protect Its Own Existence As Long as Such Protection Does Not
Conflict with the First or Second Law
THE NEW LAWS OF ROBOTICS
I
A Robot May Not Injure a Human Being.
II
A Robot Must Cooperate with Human Beings Except Where Such Cooperation
Would Conflict with the First Law.
III
A Robot Must Protect Its Own Existence, As Long As Such Protection Does Not
Conflict with the First Law.
IV
A Robot May Do Anything It Likes, Except Where Such Action Would Violate
the First, Second, or Third Laws.
THE SPACER-SETTLER STRUGGLE was at its beginning, and at its end, an
ideological contest. Indeed, to take a page from primitive studies, it might more
accurately be termed a theological battle, for both sides clung to their positions
more out of faith, fear, and tradition rather than through any carefully reasoned
marshaling of the facts.
Always, whether acknowledged or not, there was one issue at the
center of every confrontation between the two sides: robots. One side regarded
them as the ultimate good, while the other saw them as the ultimate evil.
Spacers were the descendants of men and women who had fled semi-
mythical Earth, with their robots, when robots were banned there. Exiled from
Earth, they traveled in crude star-ships on the first wave of colonization. With
the aid of their robots, the Spacers terraformed fifty worlds and created a culture
of great beauty and refinement, where all unpleasant tasks were left to the
robots. Ultimately, virtually all work was left to the robots. Having colonized
fifty planets, the Spacers called a halt, and set themselves no other task than
enjoying the fruits of their robots’ labor.
The Settlers were the descendants of those who stayed behind on
Earth. Their ancestors lived in great underground Cities, built to be safe from
atomic attack. It is beyond doubt that this way of life induced a certain
xenophobia into Settler culture. That xenophobia long survived the threat of
atomic war, and came to be directed against the smug Spacers--and their robots.
It was fear that had caused Earth to cast out robots in the first place.
Part of it was an irrational fear of metal monsters wandering the landscape.
However, the people of Earth had more reasonable fears as well. They worried
that robots would take jobs--and the means of making a living--from humans.
Most seriously, they looked to what they saw as the indolence, the lethargy, and
the decadence of Spacer society. The Settlers feared that robots would relieve
humanity of its spirit, its will, its ambition, even as they relieved humanity of its
burdens.
The Spacers, meanwhile, had grown disdainful of the people they
perceived to be grubby underground dwellers. Spacers came to deny their
common ancestry with the people who had cast them out. But so too did they
lose their own ambition. Their technology, their culture, their worldview, all
became static, if not stagnant. The Spacer ideal seemed to be a universe where
nothing ever happened, where yesterday and tomorrow were like today, and the
robots took care of all the unpleasant details.
The Settlers set out to colonize the galaxy in earnest, terraforming
endless worlds, leapfrogging past the Spacer worlds and Spacer technology. The
Settlers carried with them the traditional viewpoints of the home world. Every
encounter with the Spacers seemed to confirm the Settlers’ reasons for
distrusting robots. Fear and hatred of robots became one of the foundations of
Settler policy and philosophy. Robot hatred, coupled with the rather arrogant
Spacer style, did little to endear Spacer to Settler.
But still, sometimes, somehow, the two sides managed to cooperate,
however great the friction and suspicion. People of goodwill on both sides
attempted to cast aside fear and hatred to work together--with varying success.
It was on Inferno, one of the smallest, weakest, most fragile of the
Spacer worlds, that Spacer and Settler made one of the boldest attempts to work
together. The people of that world, who called themselves Infernals, found
themselves facing two crises. All knew about their ecological difficulties, though
few understood their severity. Settler experts in terraforming were called in to
deal with that.
But it was the second crisis, the hidden crisis, that proved the greater danger. For,
unbeknownst to themselves, the Infernals and the Settlers on that aptly named
world were forced to face a remarkable change in the very nature of robots
themselves...
--Early History of Colonization, Sarhir Vadid,
Baleyworld University Press, S. E. 1231
