Order [book in series=yearoffirstbook.book# (eg 2014.01), stand-alone or one-author collection=3333.pubyear, multi-author anthology=5555.pubyear, SFM/MM=5000, interview=1111]: 1949.02

The Humanoid Touch by Jack Williamson

In Jack Williamson’s classic short story “With Folded Hands” (1947), the inventor of the Humanoids — sleek black robots whose credo is “To Serve And Obey, And Guard Men From Harm,” even if that means stifling mankind’s freedoms — makes an unsuccessful attempt to destroy the computer plexus on planet Wing IV that is keeping the many millions of units functioning. In the author’s classic sequel, the novel The Humanoids (1949), another unsuccessful stab is made, 90 years later, by a “rhodomagnetics”