Cal

Doubleday had a re-issue series going at the time called the Isaac Asimov Collection which accepted subscribers to all of the Doubleday Asimov books that were being re-issued at the time. Subscribers to the series received this pamphlet with a new story as a thank you. Cal is a robot whose master is an author. Cal, under the influence of the latter, decides to learn to write. His master outfits his mind with a dictionary and gives him advice and a few of his own books to read, as well as a grammatical dictionary. Cal tries to write mystery like his master, but is hampered by the Three Laws of Robotics; a robot’s aversion to harming a human makes Cal cut out all violence, making the mystery rather inane. Instead, his master decides to give him the knack of recognizing humor. Cal writes a very good story on this new topic: so good, in fact, that his master is afraid of being put in the shade and ‘playing second dog to a robot’. He orders the technician to remove Cal’s abilities. Cal, hearing this, decides to kill his master, in defiance of the First Law, because apparently his new abilities take precedence: I want to be a writer.