Dercum Audio has come out with several audio
anthologies for those with commutes.
One of them, Friends, Robots, Countrymen collects nine
stories on four cassettes for a total of six hours of listening pleasure.
In addition, the late Isaac Asimov, who selected the stories,
provides a spoken introduction to the collection.
As he frequently does, Asimov expounds on the
importance of his three laws of robotics and claims they were adopted by
numerous other science fiction authors and used as the basis for a variety
of stories, even if they weren't stated explicitly. However, the
stories included do not support that thesis. Robert Bloch's
"Almost Human," in which a robot known as Junior is taught to
murder without remorse, does not even pretend to follow the three
laws. Similarly, Eric Frank Russell's "Boomerang" provides
the robot in question with a completely different set of laws and
precedents.
Several of the stories on the tapes which might have
seemed dated a decade ago because of their reliance on the cold war have
achieved a renewed poignancy with the current war on terror and subsequent
Anderson’s “Sam Hall,” Russell’s “Boomerang,” and
Dick’s “Imposter” all fit into this category. Although
the paranoia of the Dick story telegraphs, in a general way, the ending,
there is still an element of surprise in the story which Dick manages to
pull off quite well. "Boomerang" is also fairly obvious,
although enjoyable, and "Sam Hall" offers enough twists to keep
it interesting.
Some
of the longer stories tend to drift in and out of focus as the listener
hears them, even at a single sitting. It is possible that the
stories work well on the written page, but not quite as well when
read. Conversely, it may be that reading the stories out loud drives
home weaknesses which might not otherwise have been apparent.
It
would have been nice for the packaging to include the table of contents in
the order in which they are heard on the tapes, or even a complete list of
titles (Dick's "Imposter" is missing from the packaging).
Similarly, some idea about who read the stories on the tape would also be
nice. It seems that multiple voice actors were employed, yet none of
them is credited for their job. Similarly, there is no indication of
when the stories were originally published, which would have been a nice
way of helping the reader put them into some sort of context.
