Subject: (urth) "Unrequited Love"

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:05:17 +0000

This is my take on the story. Some of these points have already been made by
others.

I think that the narrator is in fact a robot. The reference to "dwarves"
refers to his diminutive size. He was a boy robot like Roberta, and of
course robot children never grow up like human children. He has been "alive"
so long that he can no longer pretend he is a real boy. His human "parents"
(human, as indicated by the meat scraps at his home) eventually grew tired
of the farce of having a perpetual child (thus "our" house).

Given the "Ro" name thing, the narrator may have been named some
unimaginative variation of robot, possibly Robbie.

There are echoes of Cyriaca's tale of the loss of the wild things in human
nature to the machines mankind made.

"Either the Robinsons could not have a child of their own, or were unwilling
to undertake the travail and expense of a real child. I could not?I do
not blame them in the least. But I wondered, because I have never had much
to do with such ?bots, about her schooling."

He could not blame them because he owed his own existence to the same
impulse. Sending a robot to school is silly on the face of it. It is all
pretense, as the narrator knows, and as he proved when a first-grade girl
robot knew about square roots.

The narrator was not exactly the Snake in the Garden. His world wasn't a
paradise, and Roberta was already aware that she knew far more than human
children. Her human classmates would grow up and move on with their lives,
whether the narrator intervened or not; it was just a matter of time before
she would be confronted with the facts. The narrator already knew the score,
having experienced it himself. Roberta was programmed to be smiling and
pleasant, the ideal child who could never be real. The real child, Julianne,
was not particularly happy; her best friend was a robot.

When the narrator learned that the real girl was getting a fake dog, and
vice versa, that is what really set him off. The fake dog would remain a
puppy and outlive the little girl, or she would grow tired of it and abandon
it, as happened to the narrator. The robot girl's puppy would grow up and
die and cause her pain. Either way, the two robots concerned would suffer.
The narrator tried to rectify the situation by causing the dogs to be
switched, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. The dogs, once
exposed to their own kind, preferred to remain with their own kind. The
girls lacked the dogs' good sense. The real dog was too real for the real
girl, and the robot dog's belief that it was really a dog served to remind
the robot girl that she, too, was not a real girl.

Robber recognized the narrator as another robot, which is why he wagged his
tail and licked the narrator's hand. The real dog could not be fooled by a
robot dog. The robot dog had to be chained to bind him to his human master,
making its suffering even greater than it would have been. That is the
narrator's only real "sin". Each dog's true love went unrequited, but I
think the same was true for the narrator.

-Roy

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From: Jesper Svedberg <jsvedberg at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 10:12:42 +0000

> of the farce of having a perpetual child (thus "our" house).

I don't think he's a boy robot based on the part you quote below:

> to do with such 'bots, about her schooling."

I interpret the "such 'bots" in this section as being child robots. If he
was a boy robot, he would himself have gone to school, but if he is an adult
robot he would have been created full size and fully functional and then it
would make sense for him to be curious to know what an intelligent robot
would do in first grade.

There's also the option that the narrator isn't entirely humanoid, but
instead some form of household robot or some weird kind of pet.

He could also be a lovebot, such as Gigolo Joe is in A.I. (a movie that has
quite a few things in common with this story). I kind of like this theory,
since it would fit with naming the narrator Romeo as someone suggested, and
since it would add an unspoken love situation between him and his mistress
(who perhaps loves him, but to whom he in unable requite the love, just as
the dogs are unable to with the girls).

Someone mentioned the racial issue as well, and I think that sounds very
interesting. There is a big difference between racial segregation and
robot/human segregation in that racial segregation can eventuall be blended
away ("Grey if you mean paint. Brown if you mean people.") whereas robots
and humans are forever separated. If the narrator wants children (and he
seems to like them at least) perhaps being in a sexual relationship with a
human woman would be extra off putting, due to its barrenness.

  // Jesper
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From: Dave Lebling <dlebling at hyraxes.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 13:37:16 +0000

The Robinsons are humans (but see below) who have a robot child. Julianne's
parents are robots (but see below) who have a human child. That's why
Julianne is unhappy and mumbles, and her "best" friend is a robot. There are
few human children in this "paradise."

The human child gets a robot dog which she is happy with, the robot child
gets a living dog which she is happy with. When they exchange dogs, Rover,
the living dog, binds with Julianne and wants to stay with her, but Julianne
has been socialized to want perfection (the attitude attacked by the
narrator's rant against sterile modernity), so she rejects the dog. The
robot dog wants to be with the robot girl, because a perfect child can
perfectly satisfy a perfect pet; she will know exactly how to maximize the
variables that make the pet "happy."

In that sense both dogs are smart enough to want to be with their own kind;
they look up to their owner in loyalty and love (or the programmed
equivalent). The real dog is too real to see that Roberta is even an owner
in that sense, so he is unhappy. Julianne is too real to believe that her
robot parents are her parents, so she is unhappy.

The narrator is a human being, and what he means by "our kind" are the
people who love sterile perfection, no messes on the carpets, the creators
of the modern world. Julianne's parents could be human as well (though I
doubt it, name aside) because they are creatures of the sterile "paradise"
and can't really love; they might as well be robots if they are not. The
same is true of Roberta's parents: they might as well be robots. (Wolfe
would ask, what human would accept a robot as a child?) Julianne is only a
child and hasn't yet quite lost the ability to love, but she is on the edge.

This ties into Wolfe's interest in humanity's relationship to God as well,
in that dogs (in the well-known joke*) see humans as gods. Dogs can
recognize God when they see him (or her). Humans are, in this future society
(and by extension, our own) too obsessed with the artificial, the human-made
perfection of the 1950s SF future that "our kind" (scientists,
transhumanists, materialists, ...) is creating. They have been socialized
not to bind with God (as Julianne can't bind with Rover).

Julianne can't see that the dog is real and she should love it as it loves
her; she is stunted by being the "child" of robots in a society where robots
are seen as human. (This is what the color mixing comment early in the story
is about: mix black and white and you get grey, mix humans and robots and
you get grey. If you mix black and white people you get brown, a real,
earthy color. A lot of this story, while inspired by Asimov's robot stories,
is in fact a counterblast against them: robots are not human, can't be
human, so Asimov's analogy with the civil rights movement is flawed.)

Roberta is programmed to love her human "parents" and her real pet; she is
happy because she is doing what she is designed to do, and unhappy when the
pet is replaced by a fake one.

-- Dave Lebling, aka vizcacha

* The well-known joke: Dogs say, "My humans feed me, they brush the tangles
out of my coat, they can open the door; they must be gods!" Cats say, "My
humans feed me, they pat me, they clean my litter box; I must be a god!"

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From: Nigel Price <nigelprice at onetel.net>
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 21:29:51 +0000

Just thought it worth mentioning in the context of Wolfe's story "Unrequited
Love" that P D James' novel "The Children of Men" is about a world in which
human beings have stopped having children and the species is in danger of
dying out. In the story, childless couples are depicted as sometimes
consoling themselves with lifelike dolls which they treat as if they were
children.

The book which, though memorable, was not terribly good, was made into a
film recently. I've read the book but not seen the film. Wolfe might or
might not have read the book or seen the film but he may well have read a
review of heard discussion of the film and been struck by the themes of
childlessness and dolls replacing real children. It is after all a slightly
strange take on things in that, globally, the population of the world
continues to increase rapidly. It is true that some groups are not
reproducing at a sufficient rate to sustain their numbers, but their
shortfall is more than made up for by others.

Nigel

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