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The Complete Roderick (S.F. Masterworks)
 
 
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The Complete Roderick (S.F. Masterworks) (Paperback)

by John Sladek (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 624 pages
  • Publisher: Gollancz (11 Oct 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1857983408
  • ISBN-13: 978-1857983401
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 301,055 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

John Sladek was one of SF's premier satirists, and The Complete Roderick is his masterpiece--a dark comedy of artificial intelligence, previously split into Roderick (1980) and Roderick at Random (1983).

Roderick is an experimental robot, a well-meaning innocent who grows up and learns what it is to be human in the comic inferno of modern America. Being human isn't much fun: bullied at school, diagnosed as mentally unstable for saying he's a robot, forever in trouble for applying logic to religion...

Being a robot is tough: a sinister government agency is determined to destroy all AI "Entities". Luckily their agents are hilariously inept--one assassin lying in wait for Roderick gets mugged for his laser-aimed sniper rifle.

Like Voltaire's Candide, Roderick moves wide-eyed through a world of insane commercialism: (Danton's Doggie Dinette, the posh canine restaurant), fly-by-night religions (the Church of Christ Symmetrical), non-art (identical purple squares, meaningless when painted by Roderick, are praised as cutting-edge art), junk science (research into psychic pigeons is faked but generates a bestseller anyway) and--everywhere--people whose fads and tics and rigid prejudices make them more programmed, less truly human, than Roderick himself.

This book is painfully funny, sprinkled with wild ideas and nifty one-liners: a surreal musical called Hello Dali; marketing a dull book on fishing as You Can Master Bait; the lady founder of Machine Lib, dubbed the Joan of Arc-welding; buying your jeans at Denim Iniquity... Beneath the dazzle, there's some seriously comic discussion of artificial intelligence and why it fascinates us.

Applause to Gollancz SF Masterworks for producing the first one-volume edition of this major SF satire. --David Langford



Product Description

Roderick is a robot and this is his autobiography. Sladek conveys, with great sensitivity and insight the innocence of an artificial intelligence and asks profound questions about mankind's right to manipulate others. It also portrays how a numerological mind might structure a narrative. Inventive, funny yet melancholy this is one of SF's greatest creative geniuses writing at his thought-provoking best.
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Customer Reviews

5 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A funny, sad, intriguing, thought provoking biography, 30 Nov 2001
By A Customer
The Complete Roderick brings together for the two previous collections of Roderick stories. From the earliest stages, where Roderick is a talking program of questionable sentience, through his childhood as a treaded box which becomes fixated by TV, his maturity and eventual departure into the world as a walking android which can pass for human, we follow the stories of Roderick, his creators, his "parents", schoolfriends, colleagues and assorted misfits, along with the tale of a shadowy goverment conspiracy to prevent the existence of Roderick and his kind. Fortunately, this conspiracy is about as effective as most government organisations and Roderick continues to grow and learn. And I think we learn a lot about ourselves as we learn about him.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Natural Intelligence Produces AI+, 2 Dec 2001
By A Customer
There is nobody smarter or funnier than Sladek and this, with Bayley's Soul of the Robot, remains the finest of treatments of artificial intelligence questioning its own identity and the mores of the society around it. It has a real feel of Smollett in its sardonic relish for human folly. It is a genuine classic, in anyone's terms, and I am so grateful it's back in print so that I can recommend it to EVERYONE. You, too, will fall in love with John Sladek's superior humour.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Mostly excellent, 25 Jan 2002
By A Customer
The two Roderick books are more about parody than science fiction, and in the main are all the better for it. The first book in particular is witty, well-observed and often poignant.

However, I found that some way into the second book -- Roderick at Random -- Sladek loses touch with the story (and with Roderick) while the parody becomes increasingly dominant and heavy-handed. It's only towards the end of the book that he seems to remember that there's supposed to be a story going on, and Roderick reappears as more than just a vague mention at the start of each chapter.

That said, very well worth the read, even if the second book is a bit heavy going at times.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining diversion
A cute, friendly robot is invented. He leaves home and wanders around on some fairly picaresque adventures. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Blackhorse47

1.0 out of 5 stars Tedious rubbish
Don't know how the other reviewers could give their recommendations. i read a lot of SF and this was just garbage. Read more
Published on 23 May 2006 by N. J. Stevens

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