More books.

While Arthi fought yet another battle in the office on Friday, I found a Nebula Winners anthology on the lost-and-found shelf under the teacher's boxes. It looked lost and forlorn, so I (out of the pure and honest goodness of my heart) elected to give it a home.

As it turns out, one of the stories featured in the collection is Asimov's Bicentennial Man. The novelette (novelette? novella? short story? who cares?) happens to be one of my favourite Asimov shorts (and, if you know me well, you are probably aware that I have read far, far too many. they are mind-expanding), as well as one of the few stories that I suggest reading next to a box of tissues (lots of stories make me cry, but tissue tears are an entirely different brand of feeling, and one I believe others are more likely to share). Basically, it's about a robot who wants to be human. So yes, I guess you can bring out the transvestite comparisons. Recommended.

I actually remember seeing the movie once, a long time ago. Of course, it was considerably stupider and more glamourous. The inevitable casting of Robin Williams and addition of a love interest were a letdown, if an expected one; from there, it slid somewhat complacently into cliché. After all, the wonder of the original story is that only an author with such a stark, unornamented style -- a style stereotypically male and stereotypically haut sci-fi (bas sci-fi, or so I term it henceforth, being more along the lines of those horrifyingly fascinating space-erotica paperbacks) -- could pull off such a plot and retain his dignity.

So yes, it was probably worse than the film version of I, Robot, but I'm not absolutely sure. ('I'm Will Smith, I hate robots, I wear Converse'; cue incomprehensible but vaguely interesting car-robot-chases, and a little later you have one very confused fourteen-year-old wondering what exactly the answer to the mystery was, and who the robot referred to in the title is, and what any of this has to do with Asimov.)