The Soul of the Robot by Barrington J. Bayley

[james_davis_nicoll]

With all due apologies to the person who commissioned it, my review of Barrington J. Bayley's The Soul of the Robot can be found at the other end of this link.

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

It struck me as Bayley's worst work. I much preferred The Fall of Chronopolis, though the Suck Fairy may have gotten at that in the intervening 40 years.

[chrysostom476.livejournal.com]

There are other books that handle the issue of consciousness better and certainly more skillfully written books about naive robots finding their way in existence.

Sladek's "Roderick" comes to mind.

typo patrol

[hazelchaz]

"was piques"
s/b
"was piqued"

"one between great world state;"
should this perhaps be this?
"one between great world states;"

website strructuring

[hazelchaz]

Any chance of getting some indexing on the website? Could be as simple as tagging each entry with the author's name...

Re: website strructuring

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I will pass this on. The template asks me for all kinds of stuff....

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Now I'm going to have to look through and see if you ever reviewed Seeds of Change

[nelc.livejournal.com]

Yes, the vitalism was my book-throwing moment. The rape doesn't seem to have made as great an impression; I'd forgotten it completely.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Rapes, plural.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

I've forgotten a lot about the book, clearly.

[rpresser.livejournal.com]

Given that I was probably no more than 12 when I first (and last) read it, I'm not surprised that it is much lesser than I remembered.

[tandw.livejournal.com]

This makes the robot sound a bit like a cross between Thomas Covenant and Corporate Skaskash.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Was this the same author who wrote that very odd book about fashion, sentient clothes, and cyborgs refighting the Russo-Japanese war in space?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The Garments of Caean?

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Yes!

(I ask that question often enough, you'd think I'd remember the damn title eventually.)

[zotz]

I met Bayley in the mid-nineties when we had him as GoH at a small con, along with his old friend Michael Moorcock. I liked him, and I've liked his other books, but that one sounds well worth missing. Thanks for the warning.