Liar! (short story)
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| "Liar!" | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Short story by Isaac Asimov | |||
| Country | United States | ||
| Language | English | ||
| Genre(s) | Science fiction short story | ||
| Publication | |||
| Published in | Astounding Science Fiction | ||
| Publication type | Periodical | ||
| Publisher | Street & Smith | ||
| Media type | Print (magazine, hardback and paperback) | ||
| Publication date | May 1941 | ||
| Chronology | |||
| Series | Robot Series | ||
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"Liar!" is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov that first appeared in the May 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and was reprinted in the collections I, Robot (1950) and The Complete Robot (1982). It was Asimov's third published positronic robot story.The word robot was introduced to the public by Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), published in 1920 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the story contains the first recorded use of the word "robotics." In 1969 Liar was adapted into an episode of the British television series Out of the Unknown, although only a few short clips of this episode are known to exist.
Plot summary
Through a fault in manufacturing, a robot, HRB-34 (Herbie), is created that has the ability to read minds. While the roboticists at U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men are trying to analyze what happened and why, the robot tells them what other people are thinking. But the First Law still applies to this robot, and so it deliberately lies when necessary to avoid hurting their feelings and to make people happy, especially in terms of romance. However, by lying, it is hurting them anyway. When it is confronted with this fact by Susan Calvin (to whom it told a lie that was particularly painful to her when it was shown to be false), the robot experiences an irresolvable logical conflict, which results in a total mental breakdown.
Major themes
The application of the three Laws of Robotics is again the subject here, like in many others of Asimov's stories, but in terms of telepathy. The lexical ambiguity that is explored here is the definition of injury, the robot having to take into account psychological injury as well as physical.
The story is also a striking early example of the "Does not compute" theme: an artificial intelligence being unable to resolve cognitive dissonance and hence self-destructing.
Another telepathic robot called R. Giskard Reventlov was later introduced by Asimov in the novel The Robots of Dawn, which takes place so long after "Liar!" that the events of "Liar!" are considered mythical.
"Liar!" also shows one of the first computers in science fiction not to always tell the truth, a paradigm kept by other writers for quite a while.[clarification needed]
See also
- Liar paradox
- Does not compute
- HAL 9000, who confronted a similar paradox when told to keep a secret, while being "hardwired" to return information truthfully and without concealment.