But Whether Men Do - Softcover

Mahan, R. Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0984190384 ISBN 13: 9780984190386

Publisher: Futureword Publishing, 2010

Synopsis

After a decade in hiding, Dr. Richard Danson has returned to unveil his greatest achievement: the SHEM (Synthetic Humanoid Emulation Machine), a robot that looks, talks, and is as intelligent as a human being. But the public eye is skeptical of Danson's creation. What would people do when forced to co-exist with a strange new race on the same level as them? Fear of the SHEM becomes widespread, and the machines become widely vilified by a society that's become worse and worse in retaliation. Danson is acting more unstable with each passing day, and one of his robots has confessed to an emotion she was never programmed with! "A moving tour-de-force that touches the heart and lifts the spirit, But Whether Men Do is a gripping and cleverly plotted tale that seamlessly weaves together the frontiers of scientific discovery while questioning what it means to love and be human. ~Michelle Izmaylov, bestselling author of The Galacteran Legacy: Galaxy Watch

About this title

About the Author

R. Anthony Mahan is nineteen years old and has aspired to be a writer since winning a short story contest in the fourth grade, which caused him to discover his new-found passion. He's always been fascinated by the potential that could lie within our future, and has thus selected science fiction as his genre of choice. Ryan finds robots in fiction generally more relatable than human characters. Many conventional works of fiction have featured robots turning evil and rebelling, with humanity painted as the heroic figures fighting against them. However, mankind is not perfect, and in fact, humanity itself is perfectly capable of evil. Because of this R. Anthony Mahan decided to create a deconstruction of the typical robot story. The robots never rebel, continuing to do the tasks they were programmed to, yet we see the human characters steadily de-evolving and committing atrocities against these machines. The novel attempts to examine how society would seriously be impacted by such machines existing and becoming widespread. Would businesses hiring these machines affect employment rates? Would violence against these robots become commonplace, and would new laws be necessary to prevent such action? What sort of person would be willing to invent these machines, and why? If these robots have the same level of intelligence as human beings, does this also include emotional intelligence? If circumstances called for it, could they feel anger, grief, or even love? "But Whether Men Do" is an examination of the robot that provides a sobering punch of realism to the creature that has captivated the minds of science fiction readers for so long.

Edition details

• Publisher: Futureword Publishing
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0984190384
• ISBN 13: 9780984190386
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 520