Wednesday, August 04, 2004

A Note about "I, Robot"

Just a warning that the following entry is a bit geeky. But hey, I think it's interesting, perhaps you will too.

...A few weeks ago I saw I, Robot and had a good time, which surprised me since every Isaac Asimov fan I know couldn't stand it.

I hadn't read the novel myself, but instead read a comic book adaptation of it when I was a teenager.

Last week I finally read Asimov's novel and made an interesting discovery.

The plot of the 2004 film I, Robot is not an adaptation of the Isaac Asimov's 1950 novel, but instead an adaptation of the short story I, Robot written in 1939 by Earl & Otto "Eando" Binder. (Asimov, a decade later, would borrow the title for his own work.)

The makers of the film took the plot of Earl & Otto's 1939 short story and threw in Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics along with several characters loosely based on the ones found in Asimov's novel. The film is thus a strange mish-mash of two completely unrelated stories with the exception of their title.

The comic book adaptation I read as a teenager was actually based on the 1939 short story, which explains why I didn't understand what the Asimov fans were so mad about. That 1939 story was also adapted in 1963 as an Outer Limits episode (also called I, Robot).

Interesting how some film plots are developed before making it to the giant screen.

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