33. Bicentennial Man

33. The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories by Isaac Asimov  (10/2/2011 - 10/20/2011)

Since I was so fired up by i, Robot, I started this book immediately after finishing it.  However, I have to say I was rather disappointed.  Some of the stories were downright amazing, but some kinda sucked.  So I would have to say that I would recommend some of them but not all.

I would avoid the following: "Feminine Intuition," which was ironic but kinda bizarre, "Waterclap," which was just awful, "That Thou Art Mindful of Him," which is a conversation between two robots and doesn't make a lot of sense, "Strangers in Paradise," wherein two brothers meet in a future where siblings are one of the rarest and strangest relationships on the planet, and "The Life and Times of Multivac," which is about a supercomputer that makes all of humanity's decisions for them.
Actually, these stories make up roughly the first half of the book. Yeah, I'd avoid the first half of this book.

But the second half -- this is where this collection of short stories got good.  "The Winnowing" is about a group of humans that, in an effort to solve world hunger, ask a scientist to develop a virus that will arbitrarily kills about 80-90% of the people exposed to it. This virus will be packaged with food parcels sent to starving villages, thus wiping out most of the population and solving the hunger problem.  The twist is awesome and I won't give it away except to say that the story is definitely worth reading.  "The Tercentary Incident" is about an accident that kills one version of the president of an organization that is basically all countries on Earth (there are two versions to prevent problems arising, one human and one robot copy).  The problem is, no one can determine whether the robot was killed -- which is totally acceptable -- or if the human was killed, which is a huge problem because then the world is being led by a robot.  This was my favorite story from this collection (other than "Bicentennial Man").

"Bicentennial Man" is the story of a robot that wants to be human and so gradually humanizes himself, starting with wearing clothes and eventually escalating  into surgeries and operations that make him physically into a human.  This is the story that the movie with Robin Williams is based on and it was amazing.  I mean, the movie is good (a childhood favorite of mine), but the subtleties of the novella are amazing.

If nothing else, read "Bicentennial Man."