I, Robot - Chapter 7: Escape, Chapter 8: Evidence

October 10th 2009

Chapter 7

This Chapter is shortly followed after the events chapter 6. A rival company has developed blueprints to build a spaces ship that can complete an interstellar jump. However, the rival company’s computer was destroyed while trying to calculate the blueprints. US Robotic take these blueprints, and uses their super computer, know as “The Brain”, to calculate the blueprints and to give the orders to other robots to build the ship. Within a few weeks, the ship is completed and surprisingly seems flawless.

Mike Donovan and Greg Powell are sent to the ship to overview it, but the brain sends the ship out without warning. During the procedures of building the ship, The Brain malfunctioned, and became a practical joker. He sent the ship out with the men, into space with no showers or beds, and no manual controls.

How a super computer this intelligent could of messed this up beats me, but sending men into space with no showers, beds, only with milk and beans seems crazy.

So far this chapter has been my favorite in the book. It holds many suspenseful moments, and to be honest, this is the first chapter I have really, really enjoyed.

The Brain cannot harm a human being, and it knew the men would only be gone long enough that they will be perfectly healthy with just beans and milk. The scariest part though, is that with the interstellar jump, any humans must go through the process of… death. That right, for a mere moment, you have to actually die in order to pass through interstellar space. But it is only in the jump that you actually are dead.

This part really got to me. Would interstellar jump really temporally kill you? Whether or not this is true, it really shows we should expect the unexpected when it comes to space science.

Chapter 8

In the year 2032, lawyer Stephen Byerley is running for mayor in New York City. However, a man known as Francis Quinn has developed a theory that Byerley is a robot, as he is never seen eating, or sleeping.

Quinn heads to US Robotics to find people to support his claim. Once Byerley arrives, they ask him to eat an apple, as robots do not eat. Without hesitation, Byerley eats the apple. This has Quinn to surprise, but he still does not believe that Stephen is human.

This really has me wondering that in the future, if robots our introduced as equal as men, will there ever be any robots running in politics? It may seem hard to believe, but I think that if we develop them enough, they could prove to do better jobs then most humans.

All of Quinns actions to prove Stephen a robot fail, and Stephen ends up winning the election.

I enjoyed the chapter a lot. The whole political plot to this story brought a relief to me. I was slightly sick of all the space plots, as they help a little to much information that I couldn’t take in.