<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

"I, Robot" is a story that was first published in Amazing Stories in January, 1939. It was written by Eando Binder (a pseudonym used by brothers Otto and Earl Binder). This was the first of several stories the authors wrote about Adam Link and, says Martin Greenberg, "it was one of the very few science fiction stories told from the point of view of a non-human."

Plot

A robot, writing in the first person, describes his existence since he was created by a scientist named Dr. Link six months earlier. Dr. Link taught him to walk, talk, and read, and provided him with the first truly mechanical brain, capable of thinking like a person. He describes how Dr. Link named him (the robot) Adam Link. Then, one night, Dr. Link died when an “angle-iron” fell from a shelf and crushed his head. Adam found his body, and when the housekeeper came in, she concluded that Adam had murdered him. For the first time, Adam left Dr. Link’s house. Outside, he came to a girl, who was so frightened by his appearance that she fell into a stream. Adam saved her, but he forgot his own strength, and broke some of her bones, and her family believed that Adam had savagely attacked her. People now hunted Adam down, thinking him a monster. Adam made his way back to Dr. Link’s house, which was soon surrounded by an angry crowd. He found a copy of Frankenstein, which Dr. Link has always prevented him from reading. Adam reads it quickly, and thinks the premise of the book is stupid—that a machine lacks a soul and will turn on its master—but he now better understands why people are reacting to him with such hostility. He knows that he could escape, but only at the cost of killing some of the people who want to kill him, so instead he writes this account of his life, and then commits suicide.

Additional Notes

This story has been anthologized in, among other things, Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 1 (1939). Asimov recounts in that book that when his publisher chose the name "I, Robot" for his 1950 book, they did so over his objections.

The authors collected their Adam Link stories in the 1965 book, Adam Link--Robot.