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The Robot Who Looked Like Me

Overview

The Robot Who Looked Like Me is a collection of science-fiction stories by American writer Robert Sheckley. First published in the United Kingdom by Sphere Books in 1978, the volume gathers thirteen stories rather than forming a single continuous novel. Its title story had appeared earlier, in the August 1973 issue of Cosmopolitan; “Slaves of Time” was published in the science-fiction anthology Nova 4 in 1974. The collection brings together work first published in different venues and displays Sheckley’s characteristic blend of speculative invention, comic reversals, and social satire.

Story and themes

In the title story, a busy man and a busy woman seek a way to make room for romance in lives crowded with other demands. Their solution is to have look-alike robots made to stand in for them. The premise turns a familiar hope—saving time through a technological substitute—into a comic problem about identity and intimacy. A robot may resemble its owner and take over some activities, but the arrangement raises a harder question: can someone delegate the experience of a relationship and still claim it as their own? The story’s humor comes from pushing an apparently practical solution toward consequences its inventors cannot neatly control.

Other pieces use speculative devices to unsettle ordinary assumptions. “Slaves of Time,” for example, takes time travel toward absurd social consequences. Across the collection, technology and futuristic situations are not merely spectacle; they give Sheckley a means to expose human vanity, self-interest, anxiety, and the rules people accept in everyday life. His satire often begins with a premise that sounds plausible, then follows its logic until the result becomes both ridiculous and revealing. The stories can be playful without being weightless: beneath the jokes are questions about work, ambition, social status, consumption, and the difficulty of forming genuine human connections.

Background and reputation

The volume reflects the range of Sheckley’s short-fiction career. Its stories appeared in such different settings as a general-interest magazine and a science-fiction anthology, demonstrating that his imaginative ideas could reach beyond specialist genre publications. The title story is particularly economical: a readily grasped robot-doppelganger premise becomes a way to examine the wish to outsource not only labor but also parts of one’s personal life. Sheckley’s brisk plotting and turns of logic make the thought experiment accessible, while the comic unease gives it depth.

Sheckley is best remembered for short fiction marked by sharp wit, unpredictable turns, and an offbeat, often absurdist sensibility. This collection is a useful showcase of those qualities. It was reprinted in the United States by Bantam in 1982, and later commentary noted that the book remained in print decades after its original appearance. Its continuing appeal rests less on forecasting a particular machine than on the durable human questions behind its inventions: what do people hope technology will take off their hands, what parts of life cannot be delegated, and what happens when convenience begins to alter the meaning of choice and responsibility?

About the Author

Robert Sheckley

Life and education

Robert Sheckley was an American writer known for science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and especially humorous short fiction. He was born in Brooklyn, New York City, on July 16, 1928, and grew up in New Jersey. He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War period. After returning, he studied at New York University and, after graduating, worked in a technical job before establishing himself as a writer. These experiences placed him in contact with military service, postwar life, and technical work, though his fiction generally transforms social realities rather than depicting them straightforwardly.

Sheckley began publishing in the early 1950s. His first story, “Final Examination,” appeared in the May 1952 issue of Imagination. He soon became a prolific contributor to science-fiction magazines. His flexible, witty, conversational style was particularly well suited to the short-story form: he could introduce an unusual premise quickly, pursue its consequences, and turn the logic back on the characters or the society around them. Some of his early stories appeared under pseudonyms, a reminder that the breadth of his magazine work was not always visible under his own name.

Works and style

Sheckley’s career included novels as well as a substantial body of short fiction. His early collections include Untouched by Human Hands (1954) and Citizen in Space (1955). Immortality, Inc. (1958) develops speculative questions about death and society into a novel, while The Tenth Victim (1965) is connected to his earlier story “Seventh Victim” (1953), a satirical treatment of violence as organized entertainment. He continued to explore identity and unstable realities in Mindswap (1966) and Dimension of Miracles (1968). The collection Can You Feel Anything When I Do This? (1971) reflects his continuing interest in comic and unsettling speculative ideas.

Robots, time travel, alien encounters, and future societies often appear in Sheckley’s work, but they are more than devices for adventure. They let him test ordinary assumptions about work, love, power, status, and self-interest. His characteristic method is to make a fantastic idea clear and inviting, then follow it toward a consequence that is both surprising and logically connected to the premise. The result can be wildly comic, yet the humor frequently carries a serious edge: human beings may be as absurd as the machines or systems they create. Although science fiction remains central to his reputation, he also wrote fantasy and mystery.

Later years and reputation

Over his career, Sheckley published more than two dozen novels, while collections of his short fiction appeared across several decades. He was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. His lasting reputation rests especially on his short stories, which readers and critics have praised for their sharp wit, unpredictable plotting, distinctive voice, and absurdist social commentary. He died in Poughkeepsie, New York, on December 9, 2005, aged 77. His work continues to be read for the ingenuity of its premises and its unsentimental insight into human behavior. As technological change makes once-fantastic ideas increasingly familiar, his stories retain their force because their deepest concerns are not machines themselves, but people’s hopes, evasions, and choices.

StoryFlow

A Double Life by Design from "The Robot Who Looked Like Me". This thread follows Charles’s attempt to outsource courtship and the unexpected consequences of treating an intimate life as a scheduling problem.

A Double Life by Design

This thread follows Charles’s attempt to outsource courtship and the unexpected consequences of treating an intimate life as a scheduling problem.

The Robots’ Unscripted Romance from "The Robot Who Looked Like Me". This thread traces the growing independence of the courtship doubles, whose shared experiences culminate in an unexplained departure.

The Robots’ Unscripted Romance

This thread traces the growing independence of the courtship doubles, whose shared experiences culminate in an unexplained departure.

Charles’s Transformation from "The Robot Who Looked Like Me". This thread follows Charles from confident managerial control toward a more vulnerable, if still imperfect, commitment to shared life.

Charles’s Transformation

This thread follows Charles from confident managerial control toward a more vulnerable, if still imperfect, commitment to shared life.