Evidence (short story)
| "Evidence" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Isaac Asimov |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Robot series |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Published in | Astounding Science Fiction |
| Publisher | Street & Smith |
| Media type | Magazine |
| Publication date | September 1946 |
| Preceded by | "Escape!" |
| Followed by | "The Evitable Conflict" |
"Evidence" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the September 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and reprinted in the collections I, Robot (1950), The Complete Robot (1982), and Robot Visions (1990).
Orson Welles purchased the movie rights for "Evidence". Asimov was initially gleeful, imagining that a grand, Citizen Kane-style motion picture would soon be in the works. However, Welles did nothing further, and Asimov earned nothing except two hundred fifty dollars and Welles' letter. His then-wife, Gertrude Blugerman, advised him to hold out for more money, but neither of them considered option payments which could be renewed every several years, allowing the movie rights to relapse if Welles took no action.
Stephen Byerley is a man, who lost his wife at a young age. He was the victim of a car accident, in which he was severely injured. After a slow recovery, he has returned to public life. He is a lawyer, a successful, middle-aged prosecutor, a humanitarian who never presses for the death penalty. He runs for mayor of a major American city (implied to be Chicago), but his opponent Francis Quinn's political machine smears him. They claim that the real Stephen Byerley, rather than having recovered, was permanently disfigured and crippled by the accident, and the Byerley who appears in the public is a humanoid robot, created by Stephen Byerley. If this is true, the "Frankenstein complex" hysteria will ruin his campaign, as only human beings are allowed to run for office. Quinn approaches U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men corporation, the world's only supplier of positronic robot brains, and attempts to persuade them that Byerley must be a robot. No one has ever seen Byerley eat or sleep, Quinn reports.
...
Wikipedia