On Robots and Roger MacBride Allen

I'm home alone this morning watching an old episode of Beakman's World while my Roomba does its job.

Beakman's World always reminds me of the time when I was in 9th grade science class and Miss Swisher played an episode for us for some gol durn reason.

From there, it wasn't hard to jump back to 7th grade, when Ms. Rocco made me compelled me to read Roger MacBride Allen's The Modular Man. This story appeared in four parts in Analog Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine back in 1992 and involves, I am not making this up, a vacuum cleaner going on trial for murder.

It's sci-fi of course, so the vacuum cleaner is a robot and possesses about as much intelligence as a house pet, and the murder victim is his owner, a man with a terminal disease who tried to put his own conscientiousness into it, full-on Transmetropolitan: "Boyfriend is a Virus"-style. The catch, of course, is that if the vacuum is actually guilty, it would mean the experiment was successful and in building its case the prosecution realizes that it's helping the defense by the very nature of the crime.

I've never really thought about owning a robot vacuum cleaner much after finishing that story 14 years ago, but now that I have a Roomba and some free time, I may just end up on trial myself.

Postscript: I purchased 3 of the 4 issues of Analog back in the day, and have always wondered how to get my hands on the missing issue. Last summer, thanks to eBay, I have the complete story on my bookshelf, and I'm strongly tempted to start through it again.