To The Last Page

Isaac Azimov’s I, Robot is an important collection of science fiction stories whose ideas in the area of robotics are still meaningful at a time when such technology is starting to play a bigger part in our lives. Considering the kind of issues that might lead to ‘incompatibilities’ between how humans and robots behave, Azimov formulated three guiding principles as the laws of robotics. Simplified those are: 1. A robot must not harm humans, 2. A robot must obey orders unless it conflicts with first law, and 3. A robot must protect itself unless it conflicts with laws one or two. Three of Asimov’s tales illustrating these principles are adapted for this graphic novel by Raúl Cuadrado, the stories linked, as they were when first collected as I, Robot , by a framework that puts them in the context of the reminiscences of Dr Susan Calvin in the year 2057. She relates to a reporter some of the unique early encounters with the peculiarities of robot technology and ‘robopsychology’ that help...

‘ Guns don’t kill people, people kill people ’ tends to be an excuse made by apologists for the right to bear arms, but having a gun certainly gives people more options for killing, particularly when it falls into the wrong hands. Take Owen Lee, a hard-bitten journalist (aren’t they all?) based in Hull in David Mark’s latest DS McAvoy thriller. Journalists might hold long grudges and undoubtedly have very good reasons to hold them but they don’t go around killing people who might have upset them or screwed them over, particularly not journalists in Hull. Imagine they had unexpected access to a gun though; would they behave any differently? Well, the answer is no, probably not. If that was the case then Darkness Falls wouldn’t have much potential as a crime thriller but maybe there are other reasons why Owen Lee might resort to violence, and if there is a valid reason you can be sure that David Mark will probe every dark corner of the human psyche to find it. Maybe if Owen Lee was alre...