The Bicentennial Man

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"The Bicentennial Man"
Short story by Isaac Asimov
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction
Publication
Published in	Stellar-2
Publisher	Ballantine Books
Media type	Book
Publication date	February 1976
Chronology
Series	Robot series
. . . That Thou Art Mindful of Him   Mother Earth

"The Bicentennial Man" is a novelette in the Robot series by American writer Isaac Asimov. According to the foreword in Robot Visions, Asimov was approached to write a story, along with a number of other authors who would do the same, for a science fiction collection to be published in honor of the United States Bicentennial. However, the arrangement fell through, leaving Asimov's the only story actually completed for the project. Asimov sold the story to Judy-Lynn del Rey, who made some small changes to the text. Asimov restored the original text when the story was collected in The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories (1976).^[1]

The story formed the basis of the novel The Positronic Man (1992), co-written with Robert Silverberg, and the 1999 film Bicentennial Man, starring Robin Williams.

In terms of setting, this novelette spans a time period of 200 years. Chapter 13 of the novelette states that "Susan Calvin, the patron saint of all roboticists" had been dead for "nearly two centuries". According to I, Robot, Susan Calvin was born in the year 1982 and died at the age of 82, either in 2064 or 2065. This suggests that the earliest events of the story took place somewhere between the 2050s and early 2060s.