Tag: The Three Laws of Robotics

Posted in AI, English 1103, Teaching, Writing

ENG 1103: Beginning Your Analysis . . .

Posted on by janemlucas

This morning in class, you will begin drafting your analysis, which will focus on Isaac Asimov’s “Runaround,” one or more of Brian Aldiss‘s supertoys stories, or “Runaround” and one or more of the early covers for Asimov’s I, Robot. Assignment details are included below and on the handout you will receive in class. An additional copy of the assignment is posted on Blackboard.

Overview

A textual analysis aims to demonstrate how a text works, how it achieves its effects. The process of writing your analysis will include these steps:

  • Summarizing the text precisely so the reader can envision it. An analysis is not a summary, but your introductory paragraph will include one that will serve as a lead-in to your thesis or main claim: what you think the text achieves or what it means and how it conveys its meaning.
  • Paying close attention to details, what they imply, and how they relate to each other and the whole
  • Explaining what the text means or what it achieves and the significance of that.

Prompts

Compose an analysis in response to one of the prompts below.

  • Isaac Asimov’s “Runaround” recounts the events of the second Mercury expedition conducted by U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, and Brian Aldiss’s supertoys stories chronicle the evolution of the Synth company, from Synthank, to Synthmania, to Worldsynth-Claws. Explore the trajectory of the technological advances in Asimov’s story or Aldiss’s trilogy.
  • Both “Runaround” and the supertoys stories portray robots in service to humans. Examine Asimov’s or Aldiss’s notion of robot service and how that vision of servitude shapes the character of one of the robots and the humans it serves. You may address more than one robot, but your analysis should focus on only one.
  • Probe Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics and consider how one robot’s adherence to or violation of one or more of the laws reflects on the laws, the robots, and/or the humans whom the robots serve.
  • Brian Aldiss’s supertoys stories not only mark the change of seasons—referenced in the titles—they also depict changes in the environment. Explore those changes and their links to technological advancements.
  • Examine the interactions between one of the humans and one of the robots in “Runaround,” or between one of the humans and one of the robots in the supertoys stories. What do the human’s interactions reveal about his or her perceptions of artificial intelligence? You may address more than one human and one robot, but your analysis should focus on the relationship between one human and one robot.
  • Study the cover art for one or more early editions of I, Robot and consider the relevance of that cover or those covers to one or more aspects of “Runaround.”
  • In “Supertoys Last All Summer Long,” David questions whether he is real. That line of inquiry continues in the second and third supertoys stories where he short-circuits the illusions of his virtual home and tries to make sense of the ravaged reality that remains. Explore David’s desire to be real and his search for meaning in the world.

Directions for Planning and Drafting

  1. Review the texts that you have read for class, and determine which one interests you most as a subject of analysis. You are not permitted to read any of the texts on screen during your drafting period today.
  2. Identify the details in the text that are thought-provoking or revealing.
  3. Develop your analysis through a close examination of those details.
  4. Write in dark ink, preferably black.
  5. Double-space to allow for room for my annotations. You are welcome to use both sides of the page.
  6. Before you leave class today, staple your handout to the top of your draft and submit it to me. Next Wednesday, I will return your draft with notes, and you will have the class period to begin revising and editing on your laptop or tablet.

Think of your preliminary draft as your down draft; your aim in the early stage of the process is to get your ideas down on the page. You may need the process of drafting to discover what you think the text means and how it conveys its meaning.

Elements for Textual Analysis

  • Language and Stylistic Devices: Literary devices (metaphors, irony, symbolism), diction (word choice), and syntax (sentence structure).
  • Content and Themes: Recurring ideas, patterns, or points of contrast.
  • Structure: Organization, including scene structure, and how it adheres to or breaks from convention.
  • Characterization: Character development, motivation, and their role in the story.

Guidelines for Revising

Your revised analysis should include the following elements:

  • A title that offers a window into your analysis
  • An introduction that presents a summary of the text
  • A thesis statement, or main claim, that presents your take on the text based on your close study of it
  • Textual evidence that supports your claims
  • A minimum of two relevant quotations from the text, introduced with signal phrases and followed by parenthetical citations
  • A conclusion that revisits the thesis without restating it verbatim
  • A work cited entry 
  • A minimum of 600 wordss

Directions for Formatting and Posting Your Revision

  1. Save your revised essay as a Microsoft Word file or PDF and submit it to Blackboard in compliance with MLA manuscript guidelines.
  2. Publish your revision as a blog post. In your post, omit the first-page information included in your file submitted to Blackboard (your name, course, section, professor’s name, and date). Add to your blog post an image that documents some part of your writing process away from the screen, such as a photo of your reading notes or a page of your draft. Also, add to your blog post an embedded link to a relevant website.

The complete guidelines for your assignment, along with the grade criteria, are also posted on Blackboard.

Next Wednesday, September 30, I will return your handwritten drafts (with my notes), and you will have the class period to begin revising on your laptops. Because the first week of October is Fall Break, you have two additional weeks to revise before you submit your analysis to Blackboard and publish it on WordPress. The due date for your revised analysis is Wednesday, October, 14 (before class). The deadline is Friday, October 16 (before class).

Writing about I, Robot Cover Art

If focusing on a visual text in your analysis appeals to you, but the I, Robot covers you viewed don’t spark any ideas, that probably isn’t the prompt you should choose. As the side-by-side pictures below demonstrate, the robots in artist John Berkey’s cover for I, Robot (on the left) bear no resemblance to Mark Zug’s Speedy.

(L-R) John Berkey’s cover for the 1970 Fawcett Crest paperback edition of I, Robot and Mark Zug’s illustration of Speedy in I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay (1994).

Although Berkey’s painting and the other early covers of I, Robot may not initially lead you to any ideas for your analysis, thinking about “Runaround” as you plan your draft may reveal a connection between the story and one or more of the covers.

Be open to discovering unexpected parallels as you write, and alter your focus if your interest changes.

In your September 16 writing about the book covers in the Asimov Collection at Smith Library, some of you observed that the robots in Berkey’s cover resembled droids in Star Wars. Notably, Berkey’s painting pictured below served as a concept poster for the first film in the franchise.

(L-R) John Berkey’s cover for the 1970 Fawcett Crest paperback edition of I, Robot and his concept poster for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)

Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review your journal notes and the blog posts devoted to Scrabble tips. Also, look back at the Scrabble debriefing notes on moving from observation to analysis. Those notes are included in the September 21 blog post.

Posted in AI, English 1103, Reading, Teaching

ENG 1103: “Runaround” Follow-Up

Posted on by janemlucas
Astronauts Mike Donovan and Gregory Powell, as depicted by artist Mark Zug in I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay by Harlan Ellison and Isaac Asimov
Astronauts Mike Donovan and Gregory Powell, as depicted by artist Mark Zug in I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay by Harlan Ellison and Isaac Asimov Ellison, Harlan, and Isaac Asimov. I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay, Illustrated by Mark Zug, 1987. ibooks/Simon & Schuster, 1994, pp. 106, 107.

Yesterday in class, in groups, you and two or three of your classmates began your examination of Isaac Asimov’s “Runaround” by identifying the central conflict in the short story and composing a short piece of writing that stated the conflict in your own words. In your statement, you included (1) the first and last name of the author, (2) the title of the short story, and (3) the first and last names of the characters. If you mentioned the malfunctioning robot, you named him as well.

Here is my version of that exercise:

In Isaac Asimov’s short story “Runaround,” astronauts Gregory Powell and Mike Donovan, stationed on Mercury, find their lives in jeopardy when the photo-cell banks on their life support shields begin to fail. To repair the shields, their robot, Speedy, must retrieve selenium from the Sunside of the planet, a place humans cannot withstand. But rather than completing his mission, Speedy circles the selenium pool, leaving Powell and Donovan in danger of burning alive.

Along with composing a statement that outlined the central conflict in Asimov’s story, you developed talking points for our discussion, including these:

  • The differences between Powell and Donovan
  • The differences between the treatment of the older robots from the first expedition in 2005 and Speedy, the new robot, the 2015 SPD 13
  • How did the older robots from the first expedition still work?
  • Why were the older robots left behind after the first expedition?
  • The need for Powell and Donovan to ride the old robots like horses
  • The status of robots in the hierarchy of work
  • Speedy’s malfunction–something akin to drunkenness–due to the conflicts between Laws Two and Three
  • The Three Laws of Robotics
  • What aspects of “Runaround” led it to be considered an influential work of science fiction?
  • At the end of the story, why did Asimov employ dark humor about the freezing cold when the robot couldn’t understand it?
Speedy, the SPD 13 robot, as depicted by artist Mark Zug Ellison, Harlan, and Isaac Asimov. I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay
Speedy, the SPD 13 robot, as depicted by artist Mark Zug Ellison, Harlan, and Isaac Asimov. I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay, Illustrated by Mark Zug, 1987. ibooks/Simon & Schuster, 1994, p. 109.

The illustrations in today’s blog post were drawn by Mark Zug for I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay, by Harlan Ellison and Isaac Asimov. The screenplay was never produced as a film, but it was serialized in Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine in 1987. In 1994, it appeared in book form under the title I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay. That book is one of the paperbacks you will examine when we visit Smith Library on Wednesday.

Though the film I, Robot (2004), starring Will Smith, shares its name with Asimov’s short story collection, it isn’t an adaptation of the book. It includes elements of Asimov’s story “Little Lost Robot,” some of Asimov’s character names, and the Three Laws figure in the film as well, but the similarities end there.

Congratulations to Claire Jahnke and Leslie Mendoza Arreola for winning copies of I, Robot in yesterday’s drawing.

Next Up

For Wednesday’s class, you will read and annotate Brian Aldiss’s short story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long,” which I distributed in class yesterday. If you were absent or misplaced your copy, print one from Blackboard.

Wednesday, we will meet on the lower level of Smith Library, where we will examine some of the science fiction books in the Asimov Collection, donated to the library by Dr. John L. Hubisz, a retired physics professor who taught at North Carolina State University. In your perusal of the novels’ and short story collections’ covers, you will explore how artists have depicted science fiction in their cover illustrations and what those images reveal not only about the stories themselves but also about readers’ perceptions and marketing.