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Science fiction has certain satisfactions peculiar to itself It is possible, in trying to portray future technology, to hit close to ho a particular story, youyour predictions reasonably accurate and yourself hailed as a sort of minor prophet

This has happened to ht Verse" (included here) is an exa robot stories in 1939, when I was nineteen years old, and, from the first, I visualized theineers, with inherent safeguards, which I called "The Three Laws of Robotics" (In doing so, I was the very first to use the word "robotics" in print, this taking place in the March, 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction) As it happened, robots of any kind were not really practical until the mid-1970s when the microchip came into use Only that h and cheap enough, while possessing the potentiality for sufficient capacity and versatility, to control a robot at nonprohibitive expense

We now have machines, called robots, that are coly perform simple and repetitious work on the asse, polishing and so on - and they are of increasing inized field of study and the precise word that I invented is used for it - robotics

To be sure, we are only at the very beginning of the robotic revolution The robots now in use are littlethe complexity necessary for the Three Laws to be built into the close to human in shape, so they are not yet the "mechanical men" that I have pictured in my stories, and that have appeared on the screen innumerable times

Nevertheless, the direction of movement is clear The primitive robots that have come into use are not the Frankenstein-monsters of equally primitive science fiction They do not lust for hu robots can result in human death, just as accidents with automobiles or electrical ned devices intended to relieve hu duties so that, in intent and in philosophy, they represent the first steps toward my story - robots

The steps that are yet to come are expected to proceed further in the direction I haveon "houely human appearance and will fulfill some of the duties that once devolved on servants

The result of all this is that I a in the field of robotics In 1985, a fat encyclopedic volume entitled Handbook of Industrial Robotics (edited by Shimon Y Nof and published by John Wiley) appeared, and, on request of the editor, I supplied it with an introduction

Of course, in order to appreciate the accuracy of h to be a survivor My first robots appeared in 1939, as I say, and I had to live for over forty more years in order to discover I was a prophet Because I had begun at a very early age, and because I was fortunate, I rateful I am for that

Actually, I carried on my predictions of the future of robotics to the very end, to the ultimate moment, in my story "The Last Question," published in 1957 I have a sneaking suspicion that, if the huress in that direction in some ways anyway Still, survival is li very y I will have to content enerations witness and (I hope) applaud what triuain I, myself, won&039;t, Nor are robots the only area in which my crystal ball was clear In my story "The Martian Way," published in 1952, I described a space walk quite accurately, although an actual feat of this sort didn&039;t take place till fifteen years afterward Foreseeing space walks was not a very daring piece of prescience, I ads would be inevitable However, I also described the psychological effects and thought of one that was rather unusual - particularly for me

I am, you see, a pronounced acrophobe with an absolute terror of heights and know perfectly well that I will never voluntarily go on a spaceship If, however, I were somehow forced on one, I know, too, that I would never dare leave it for a space walk Nevertheless, I put personal fear to one side and iined the space walk to produce euphoria I had et out into space and drift in quiet peace a the stars And when space walks became fact, such euphoria was felt

Inof Power," published in 1957, I made use of pocket co I even considered the possibility that such coht seriously decrease the ability of people to do arithmetic in the old-fashioned way, and that is a real concern of educators now

As a final example, in my story "Sally," published in 1953, I described co lives of their own And, in the last few years, we do indeed have computerized cars that can actually talk to the driver - although their abilities in this direction are, as yet, very simple

Yet, if there is the possibility of this satisfaction from accurate prophecy in science fiction, there is also the reverse Science fiction offers its writers chances of embarrassment that no other form of fiction does

After all, if we may prove accurate in our predictions, we may prove inaccurate as well, sometimes ludicrously so

Such embarrassment becomes particularly acute when one&039;s stories are reprinted in a collection such as this one When an author starts young, lives out a nor) and has written continuously, there is likely to be included in the collection stories that ritten and published thirty and forty years before and that leave ample scope for any cloudiness in the crystal ball to show up

This doesn&039;t happen tofor me In the first place, I a in fundamentals Secondly, I am cautious in my predictions and do not flail away madly in contravention of scientific principles

Nevertheless, science does advance and sometimes produces completely unexpected results in a very few years, and this h and dry on a pinnacle of false "facts " The worst luck I had in this respect turned up in connection with a series of science fiction novels I wrote for youngsters between 1952 and 1958

That series dealt with the continuing adventures of my heroes on various planets of the solar system, and in each case, I carefully described the planets in strict accordance as known about them at the time

Unfortunately, it was in the course of those very years that microwave astronomy was developed and shortly after those years that rocket probes began to be sent out The result was that our knowledge of the solar syste new and unexpected about every single planet

For instance, inSun of Mercury, I had it facing one side to the Sun, as astronoht - and that was essential to the plot As it happens, however,that Mercury turns slowly and that every portion of its surface gets sunlight part of the time There is no "dark side"

In my description of Venus in Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus, I had a planetwide ocean, which, at that time, seemed at least possible It was essential to the plot as well However,that the surface of Venus is at a te point of water, and an ocean - or even a drop - of liquid water on its surface is totally impossible

As for Mars, in et the description right in e extinct Martian volcanoes that were discovered about fifteen years after the book was published What&039;s more, I did talk about the canals (dry ones), which were found to be nonexistent, and I introduced intelligent Martians re-dead surface civilization, and this is really extremely unlikely

Jupiter and its satellites appeared in Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter, and while I was careful to describe all the worlds, I naturally missed some major points that were not discovered till twenty years afterward I said nothing of the cracked world-girdling glacier of Europa and nothing of Io&039;s active volcanoes I didn&039;t netic field Nor, in Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn, did Ifeatures of the Saturnian satellite systes

The only book in the series that survived intact (scientifically speaking) was Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids