Retro-Review: The Runaway Robot

[seawasp]

This juvenile SF novel was probably the very first true SF novel I ever bought, although my own copy disappeared many years ago. I purchased it as part of my first Scholastic Book Club order and devoured it as soon as it arrived (literally; I was reading it in class). I hadn't read it since I was very young, however, and I was afraid my memory of it might be much better than the actual book when I sat down with a new copy to read it to my son Gabriel.

Fortunately, I was not disappointed.

The Runaway Robot says "by Lester Del Rey" on the cover, but in actuality Del Rey only did an outline; the actual novel was written by Paul W. Fairman, and is undoubtedly the best-known and longest lived of his works (although a couple of his other stories inspired some old pulp-sf style movies).

The action takes place in a world that is clearly a classic 1950s-60s "far future" reminiscent in many ways of some of Heinlein's juveniles. Interestingly, the changes in culture since the time it was written may, in some ways, have improved the novel; the culture of 1960-imagined-future is similar enough to recognize, yet alien enough to feel like something not quite of THIS world, especially for young people today who weren't living during the 60s and 70s.

The story is fairly straightforward, as befits a juvenile novel. Without giving away too many details, the viewpoint character Rex is a robot, a manufactured companion, caretaker, etc., for a boy named Paul, son of the mayor of a small city on Ganymede. When Paul's family is suddenly recalled to Earth, the company employing Paul's father won't pay to ship a robot across the Solar System, and so Rex is sold off. But neither Paul nor Rex is happy with this arrangement, and the novel follows their determined struggle to stay together, and especially Rex's struggle with the limitations of being a mere robot in a world dominated by human beings.

It's a pretty tightly plotted, well-told yarn, with lots of influence from the classic pulps (lots of native-to-the-solar-system races like Martians and Venusians, etc.) and a couple of very interesting twists thrown in to make it not just the Same Old Thing. Rex is a fun character to spend a book with, self-deprecating, honest, puzzled by the world around him, and perhaps just a bit too humble for his own good sometimes. There's real struggle and a number of true moral conflicts and dilemmas that both Paul and Rex have to face before reaching the conclusion of their journey.

I strongly recommend this wonderful, if somewhat dated, novel to anyone with kids of the appropriate age. I had a lot of fun re-reading it, too.

Comments

[amykb.livejournal.com]

My first was The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonderful_Flight_to_the_Mushroom_Planet

[seawasp]

That was an early favorite of mine, too, but I have a hard time putting it into the SF category. Mr. Bass' inventions are much too magical. Alchemical, one might say. It's ... science-fantasy, sort of. There's a very scientific sensawunda, but ALSO a very magical one as well.

Runaway Robot was very, very clearly science-fiction throughout.

[xander-opal.livejournal.com]

Wow... I've forgotten about that one. I agree with your analysis; it was a very well-written piece.

[dsrtao]

What would you consider an appropriate mental age? My five-year-old is now laughing his head off at Calvin and Hobbes and enjoying Encyclopedia Brown.

[seawasp]

He might be fine with it, if you read it to him. It's above the Encyclopedia Brown level -- a little lower than RAH's juvies but not too far below.

[julesjones]

I remember reading that one as a teenager, and thoroughly enjoying it.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I, too, loved this book. I illustrated it for a project in the sixth grade, and recounted the plot to my classmates. I think it was new when I read it; the Scholastic edition gave it wide circulation, but I read the library hardcover.

I liked it better than other del Rey novels, most of which del Rey wrote himself, I think.

[qinshihuangdi.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I ever really grew out of that demographic of fiction. I've never came accross this story before, so I will try to add it to my list of things to read. I hadn't known that Del Ray was an actual person before.

[seawasp]

Lester Del Rey was a very successful SF author who eventually founded his own publishing imprint -- Del Rey -- which became even more successful (one of the major drivers being the Shannara series).

Lester was a very good writer, and I'm sure he COULD have written "The Runaway Robot" just fine, but he was sharecropping out to other authors quite a bit at that point.