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Written by Isaac Asimov
A short story in the Robot Stories Of Isaac Asimov series
Cover Notes
A Susan Calvin story.
Somehow, a robot is created that has the ability to read minds. While the heads of U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men are trying to analyse what happened, the robot tells them what the other people are thinking. The First Law still applies to this robot, and it is lying to them about the thoughts it has "read" in order not to hurt them, especially in terms of the problem it was intially designed to solve. Unfortunately, when the robot is confronted about this, it finds that it has in fact hurt them. Anything it does from that point on would further violate the First Law, and it collapses.
The application of the Laws of Robotics is again the subject here, but in terms of telepathy. The lexical ambiguity that is explored here is the definition of "injury", the robot in "Liar!" takes into account psychological injury as well as physical.
Publication History
This story is contained in:
- Astounding Science Fiction magazine edited by John W Campbell - published May, 1941 by Street And Smith
- I Robot by Isaac Asimov - published December, 1950 by Gnome
Categories: Authors Isaac Asimov ! Series Robot Stories Of Isaac Asimov
