The Cruel Equations
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Jump to navigationJump to searchSheckley, Robert. "The Cruel Equations." BOAC (no other information given in Contento, Index). Coll. Can You Feel Anything . . ., q.v. under Anthologies.
Darkly comic tale driving home the moral that it is wrong and potentially dangerous to project human qualities onto machines. Case at issue: a security robot "no more reasonable than a McCormick harvester, no more kindly than an automated steel mill"—only rigorously logical in a stupidly mechanical sort of way (Can You Feel Anything, Book Club Edition [66]). Cf. and contrast T. Godwin's "The Cold Equations," cited in this Category.
RDE, Title, 11Aug19