Robot AL-76 Goes Astray
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Robot AL-76 Goes Astray is a humorous science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov, originally published in Amazing Stories, February 1942, and included in the collection The Rest of the Robots.
AL-76 (aka Al) is a robot designed for mining work on the Moon, but as a result of an accident after leaving the factory of US Robots and Mechanical Men, it gets lost and finds itself in rural Virginia. It can't comprehend the unfamiliar environment and the people it meets are scared of it. When it comes across a shed full of spare parts and junk, it is moved to reprogram itself and builds a powerful mining tool of the kind it was designed to use on the Moon - but since it doesn't have the proper parts, it improvises and produces a better model, requiring less power. When angrily told to destroy it and forget all about it, it obeys, and the secret of the reprogramming and the improved tool is lost.
The theme of a robot reacting to an unfamiliar environment and reprogramming itself has been revisited on many occasions, including the film Short Circuit.
| The Complete Robot |
| A Boy's Best Friend | Sally | Someday | Point of View | Think! | True Love | Robot AL-76 Goes Astray | Victory Unintentional | Stranger In Paradise | Light Verse | Segregationist | Robbie | Let's Get Together | Mirror Image | The Tercentenary Incident | First Law | Runaround | Reason | Catch that Rabbit | Liar! | Satisfaction Guaranteed | Lenny | Galley Slave | Little Lost Robot | Risk | Escape! | Evidence | The Evitable Conflict | Feminine Intuition | —That Thou art Mindful of Him | The Bicentennial Man |
