{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4869", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 4869, "subject": "\"Unrequited Love\"", "messages": 4, "voices": 4, "first": "2007-06-28T00:05:17+00:00", "last": "2007-06-29T21:29:51+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "<001401c7b918$067da640$15c95a42@rclackey.stic.net>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2007-06-28T00:05:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) \"Unrequited Love\"", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is my take on the story. Some of these points have already been made by\nothers.\n\nI think that the narrator is in fact a robot. The reference to \"dwarves\"\nrefers to his diminutive size. He was a boy robot like Roberta, and of\ncourse robot children never grow up like human children. He has been \"alive\"\nso long that he can no longer pretend he is a real boy. His human \"parents\"\n(human, as indicated by the meat scraps at his home) eventually grew tired\nof the farce of having a perpetual child (thus \"our\" house).\n\nGiven the \"Ro\" name thing, the narrator may have been named some\nunimaginative variation of robot, possibly Robbie.\n\nThere are echoes of Cyriaca's tale of the loss of the wild things in human\nnature to the machines mankind made.\n\n\"Either the Robinsons could not have a child of their own, or were unwilling\nto undertake the travail and expense of a real child. I could not?I do\nnot blame them in the least. But I wondered, because I have never had much\nto do with such ?bots, about her schooling.\"\n\nHe could not blame them because he owed his own existence to the same\nimpulse. Sending a robot to school is silly on the face of it. It is all\npretense, as the narrator knows, and as he proved when a first-grade girl\nrobot knew about square roots.\n\nThe narrator was not exactly the Snake in the Garden. His world wasn't a\nparadise, and Roberta was already aware that she knew far more than human\nchildren. Her human classmates would grow up and move on with their lives,\nwhether the narrator intervened or not; it was just a matter of time before\nshe would be confronted with the facts. The narrator already knew the score,\nhaving experienced it himself. Roberta was programmed to be smiling and\npleasant, the ideal child who could never be real. The real child, Julianne,\nwas not particularly happy; her best friend was a robot.\n\nWhen the narrator learned that the real girl was getting a fake dog, and\nvice versa, that is what really set him off. The fake dog would remain a\npuppy and outlive the little girl, or she would grow tired of it and abandon\nit, as happened to the narrator. The robot girl's puppy would grow up and\ndie and cause her pain. Either way, the two robots concerned would suffer.\nThe narrator tried to rectify the situation by causing the dogs to be\nswitched, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. The dogs, once\nexposed to their own kind, preferred to remain with their own kind. The\ngirls lacked the dogs' good sense. The real dog was too real for the real\ngirl, and the robot dog's belief that it was really a dog served to remind\nthe robot girl that she, too, was not a real girl.\n\nRobber recognized the narrator as another robot, which is why he wagged his\ntail and licked the narrator's hand. The real dog could not be fooled by a\nrobot dog. The robot dog had to be chained to bind him to his human master,\nmaking its suffering even greater than it would have been. That is the\nnarrator's only real \"sin\". Each dog's true love went unrequited, but I\nthink the same was true for the narrator.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<5b926a550706280312n609410d8n33e4fd1e8c240c83@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Jesper Svedberg", "address": "jsvedberg at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-06-28T10:12:42+00:00", "subject": "(urth) \"Unrequited Love\"", "in_reply_to": "<001401c7b918$067da640$15c95a42@rclackey.stic.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "2007/6/28, Roy C. Lackey :" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This is my take on the story. Some of these points have already been made\nby\nothers.\n\nI think that the narrator is in fact a robot. The reference to \"dwarves\"\nrefers to his diminutive size. He was a boy robot like Roberta, and of\ncourse robot children never grow up like human children. He has been\n\"alive\"\nso long that he can no longer pretend he is a real boy. His human\n\"parents\"\n(human, as indicated by the meat scraps at his home) eventually grew tired\nof the farce of having a perpetual child (thus \"our\" house)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't think he's a boy robot based on the part you quote below:\n\n\"Either the Robinsons could not have a child of their own, or were unwilling" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "to undertake the travail and expense of a real child. I could not?I do\nnot blame them in the least. But I wondered, because I have never had much\nto do with such 'bots, about her schooling.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I interpret the \"such 'bots\" in this section as being child robots. If he\nwas a boy robot, he would himself have gone to school, but if he is an adult\nrobot he would have been created full size and fully functional and then it\nwould make sense for him to be curious to know what an intelligent robot\nwould do in first grade.\n\nThere's also the option that the narrator isn't entirely humanoid, but\ninstead some form of household robot or some weird kind of pet.\n\nHe could also be a lovebot, such as Gigolo Joe is in A.I. (a movie that has\nquite a few things in common with this story). I kind of like this theory,\nsince it would fit with naming the narrator Romeo as someone suggested, and\nsince it would add an unspoken love situation between him and his mistress\n(who perhaps loves him, but to whom he in unable requite the love, just as\nthe dogs are unable to with the girls).\n\nSomeone mentioned the racial issue as well, and I think that sounds very\ninteresting. There is a big difference between racial segregation and\nrobot/human segregation in that racial segregation can eventuall be blended\naway (\"Grey if you mean paint. Brown if you mean people.\") whereas robots\nand humans are forever separated. If the narrator wants children (and he\nseems to like them at least) perhaps being in a sexual relationship with a\nhuman woman would be extra off putting, due to its barrenness.\n\n\n // Jesper" } ] }, { "message_id": "<003301c7b989$722ae3a0$0d35290a@bluelnk.net>", "from": { "name": "Dave Lebling", "address": "dlebling at hyraxes.com" }, "date": "2007-06-28T13:37:16+00:00", "subject": "(urth) \"Unrequited Love\"", "in_reply_to": "<001401c7b918$067da640$15c95a42@rclackey.stic.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The Robinsons are humans (but see below) who have a robot child. Julianne's\nparents are robots (but see below) who have a human child. That's why\nJulianne is unhappy and mumbles, and her \"best\" friend is a robot. There are\nfew human children in this \"paradise.\"\n\nThe human child gets a robot dog which she is happy with, the robot child\ngets a living dog which she is happy with. When they exchange dogs, Rover,\nthe living dog, binds with Julianne and wants to stay with her, but Julianne\nhas been socialized to want perfection (the attitude attacked by the\nnarrator's rant against sterile modernity), so she rejects the dog. The\nrobot dog wants to be with the robot girl, because a perfect child can\nperfectly satisfy a perfect pet; she will know exactly how to maximize the\nvariables that make the pet \"happy.\"\n\nIn that sense both dogs are smart enough to want to be with their own kind;\nthey look up to their owner in loyalty and love (or the programmed\nequivalent). The real dog is too real to see that Roberta is even an owner\nin that sense, so he is unhappy. Julianne is too real to believe that her\nrobot parents are her parents, so she is unhappy.\n\nThe narrator is a human being, and what he means by \"our kind\" are the\npeople who love sterile perfection, no messes on the carpets, the creators\nof the modern world. Julianne's parents could be human as well (though I\ndoubt it, name aside) because they are creatures of the sterile \"paradise\"\nand can't really love; they might as well be robots if they are not. The\nsame is true of Roberta's parents: they might as well be robots. (Wolfe\nwould ask, what human would accept a robot as a child?) Julianne is only a\nchild and hasn't yet quite lost the ability to love, but she is on the edge.\n\nThis ties into Wolfe's interest in humanity's relationship to God as well,\nin that dogs (in the well-known joke*) see humans as gods. Dogs can\nrecognize God when they see him (or her). Humans are, in this future society\n(and by extension, our own) too obsessed with the artificial, the human-made\nperfection of the 1950s SF future that \"our kind\" (scientists,\ntranshumanists, materialists, ...) is creating. They have been socialized\nnot to bind with God (as Julianne can't bind with Rover).\n\nJulianne can't see that the dog is real and she should love it as it loves\nher; she is stunted by being the \"child\" of robots in a society where robots\nare seen as human. (This is what the color mixing comment early in the story\nis about: mix black and white and you get grey, mix humans and robots and\nyou get grey. If you mix black and white people you get brown, a real,\nearthy color. A lot of this story, while inspired by Asimov's robot stories,\nis in fact a counterblast against them: robots are not human, can't be\nhuman, so Asimov's analogy with the civil rights movement is flawed.)\n\nRoberta is programmed to love her human \"parents\" and her real pet; she is\nhappy because she is doing what she is designed to do, and unhappy when the\npet is replaced by a fake one.\n\n-- Dave Lebling, aka vizcacha\n\n* The well-known joke: Dogs say, \"My humans feed me, they brush the tangles\nout of my coat, they can open the door; they must be gods!\" Cats say, \"My\nhumans feed me, they pat me, they clean my litter box; I must be a god!\"" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Nigel Price", "address": "nigelprice at onetel.net" }, "date": "2007-06-29T21:29:51+00:00", "subject": "(urth) re: \"Unrequited Love\"", "in_reply_to": "<003301c7b989$722ae3a0$0d35290a@bluelnk.net>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Just thought it worth mentioning in the context of Wolfe's story \"Unrequited\nLove\" that P D James' novel \"The Children of Men\" is about a world in which\nhuman beings have stopped having children and the species is in danger of\ndying out. In the story, childless couples are depicted as sometimes\nconsoling themselves with lifelike dolls which they treat as if they were\nchildren.\n\nThe book which, though memorable, was not terribly good, was made into a\nfilm recently. I've read the book but not seen the film. Wolfe might or\nmight not have read the book or seen the film but he may well have read a\nreview of heard discussion of the film and been struck by the themes of\nchildlessness and dolls replacing real children. It is after all a slightly\nstrange take on things in that, globally, the population of the world\ncontinues to increase rapidly. It is true that some groups are not\nreproducing at a sufficient rate to sustain their numbers, but their\nshortfall is more than made up for by others.\n\nNigel" } ] } ] }