The funniest golden-age sci-fi story: "The Proud Robot" (1943) by Henry Kuttner (Lewis Padgett)

We just loved this lively and often frankly hilarious account of how a very gifted (when under the influence of the demon Drink) scientist struggles to come to grips with the wackiness of his almost-perfect robot - which he had just created with quite extraordinary powers, for a purpose which he cannot remember - and with his seemingly inextricable financial predicament(s).

It was first published in the October 1943 issue of Astounding Science Fiction as by "Lewis Padgett", a nom de plume used by Henry Kuttner (1915–1958) [1] and his wife C.L. Moore (1911-1987) for many of the 200+ fantasy, s-f and horror stories which they wrote together, essentially during the forties, mostly under this name. [2]

However C.L. Moore wrote in her introduction to the 1973 paperback reprint of the series of Gallegher stories [3], of which this is the best-known one, that they were all solely written by her husband, which is why we feel free to attribute this delightful tale to the male member of that remarkable literary team.

We have included here the original Astounding Science-Fiction graphics by Kramer, and the text is presented with the standard magazine format whereby meaningful sub-sections are separated by blank lines (a presentation most beneficial for the reader’s comfort, unfortunately abandoned by almost all book-format anthologies).

(12,000 words)

An e-book is available for downloading below.

The Proud Robot (e-book)