Satisfaction Guaranteed by Isaac Asminov

Satisfaction Guaranteed by Isaac Asminov

The 20th century was the big exploitation of human creativity where technological fantasy was concerned. This started in the late 19th century with futuristic writings such as Jules Verne's, that pictured the many possibilities for human discoveries and inventions, but had a major increase in the first half of the 20th century, when practically every day new inventions appeared, more and more amazing and sophisticated.

The story Satisfaction Guaranteed by Isaac Asimov is one of the many examples of the futuristic world where robots are the main tool to help humans. The conception of the perfect robot, that everyone envisioned in the middle 20th century, was a flawless copy of the life human model. They where conceived in human looks and activities, replacing workers, servants or helpers with robot characters that would almost become alive. Sometimes they even displayed human characteristics, such as emotions, that a real machine would never be able to have. In the story Satisfaction Guaranteed the robot tries to help the human character to feel better about herself, by flirting with her. This is supposed to be part of his program, but the human character, Claire, can not help mixing emotions.

Perhaps the real dream that propels this kind of stories in fiction is not reaching to what humans can create, but rather what humans will never be able to create: the emotional link between people and technology. Today, half a century later, it is plain to see that this kind of robots could be built any time and will probably circulate in the market sooner than we imagine. But the fact that they befriend the people they work for, and that a human could fall in love with a robot, as it happens to Claire in the story, is very unlike in real life. The very real side of the story is the first reaction humans have about the whole situation. At first, Claire does not like the idea of having a robot in the house. She refuses to accept the company of this character because he is not human. But as the story unwinds, she gradually accepts him and changes her attitude towards him. It is the typical story of the outcast that is rejected at first, only because he is unfairly misunderstood. Afterwards he wins the trust and like of the others around him. In this case it is a robot the outcast one that has to overcome the misgivings of the world around him. This would become to model of many other robot stories of our time, about the eternal battle between humans and machines, and the myth that humans can create machines powerful enough to destroy them. However the story has a bit of reality in it, since humans do use robots to do the house work. Only that they still haven't created one that would perform all activities together, but design one specific robot for each task. They don't look human-like, perhaps, especially to avoid this kind of emotional conflict between machines and their owners.

The story was written in 1951, when the world's image of robots was much different than it is today. In spite of all the technologic and scientific advances made by that period, in the mid 20th century this kind of discoveries were still out of people's reach. But they all accepted this kind of literature as the prediction of a very near future.