"Unrequited Love"

Dave Lebling · 28 Jun 2007, 13:37 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: dlebling at hyraxes.com (Dave Lebling)
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 09:37:16 -0400
Subject: (urth) "Unrequited Love"
In-Reply-To: <001401c7b918$067da640$15c95a42 at rclackey.stic.net>
References: <001401c7b918$067da640$15c95a42 at rclackey.stic.net>
Message-ID: <003301c7b989$722ae3a0$0d35290a at bluelnk.net>

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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