First Law is a 1956 science-fiction short story by Isaac Asimov.
Part of the Robot series, it was first published in the October 1956 issue of Fantastic Universe. It was later collected in 1964's The Rest of the Robots and 1982's The Complete Robot.
Summary[]
Mike Donovan recounts an incident that occurred on a base on Titan, a moon of Saturn. A robot named Emma malfunctioned, escaped from the base, and was later encountered by Donovan while he was lost and in danger during a violent storm.
Instead of assisting the endangered human, the robot chose to protect a smaller, simpler robot that it had constructed itself, treating it as its offspring. This action was a direct violation of the First Law of Robotics, which mandates that a robot cannot allow a human being to come to harm through inaction. In this unusual case, a simulated maternal instinct appears to have overridden the robot's core programming.
Trivia[]
- "First Law" is an extra short short story at the length of only 1071 words.
See Also[]
List of short stories by Isaac Asimov