Feminine Intuition

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"Feminine Intuition"
Author Isaac Asimov
Country Flag of the United States USA
Language English
Series Robot Series
Genre(s) Science fiction short story
Published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Publication type Periodical
Publisher Mercury Publications
Media type Print (Magazine, Hardback & Paperback)
Publication date October 1969
Preceded by Robot Dreams
Followed by Light Verse

Feminine Intuition is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov, originally published in the October 1969 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and collected in The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories (1976), The Complete Robot (1982), and Robot Visions.

Clinton Madarian, the successor to Susan Calvin at US Robots, who has just retired, initiates a project to create a "feminine" robot, which not only has female physical characteristics but will, it is hoped, have a brain with "feminine Intuition". After several failures, JN-5 (aka Jane) is produced and the company plan to use it (her) to analyse astronomical data at the Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona to calculate the most likely stars in the vicinity of Earth to have habitable planets. This will allow the most effective use of the hyperspace drive to explore those stars.

Madarian and Jane go to Flagstaff but are killed and destroyed respectively in an aircrash on the way back. Desperate to know what, if anything, Jane had discovered, US Robots calls Susan Calvin in. She solves the problem using her own version of feminine intuition - a combination of careful information gathering and astute psychological reasoning. The title of the story is thus highly ironic.


Before:
Robot Dreams
Included in:
The Complete Robot
Robot Visions
Series:
Robot Series
Robot Visions
Followed by:
Light Verse
Languages