Runaround (story)

"Runaround"
Author	Isaac Asimov
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Robot series
Genre(s)	Science short story
Published in	Astounding Science Fiction
Publication type	Periodical
Publisher	Street & Smith
Media type	Print (magazine, hardback, paperback)
Publication date	March 1942

"Runaround" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov, featuring his recurring characters Powell and Donovan. It was written in October 1941 and first published in the March 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It appears in the collections I, Robot (1950), The Complete Robot (1982), and Robot Visions (1990). Runaround is notable for featuring the first explicit appearance of the Three Laws of Robotics, which had previously only been implied in Asimov's robot stories.

Such as in many of Asimov's Robot stories, the application of the Three Laws of Robotics is the subject, though in contrast to the majority (in which the lexical ambiguities of the Laws are employed to fashion a dilemma), the robot featured in "Runaround" is actually following the Laws as they were intended.

Artificial intelligence researcher Marvin Minsky said: "After 'Runaround' appeared in the March 1942 issue of Astounding [now Analog Science Fiction and Fact ], I never stopped thinking about how minds might work."

In 2015, Powell, Donovan and Robot SPD-13 (also known as "Speedy") are sent to Mercury to restart operations at a mining station which was abandoned ten years before.

They discover that the photo-cell banks that provide life support to the base are short on selenium and will soon fail. The nearest selenium pool is seventeen miles away, and since Speedy can withstand Mercury’s high temperatures, Donovan sends him to get it. Powell and Donovan become worried when they realize that Speedy has not returned after five hours. They use a more primitive robot to find Speedy and try to analyze what happened to it.

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