First Published: 1965

Rating: Excellent

"It was an exciting day. A rocket was due from Earth, and I guess nothing more exciting than that ever happens on Ganymede."

I scoured the Internet for reviews of Lester del Rey's The Runaway Robot, and for the most part came up empty-handed. What information I did find was mostly all from people who had read the book as a child and were seeking out copies in their local library or through Amazon so they could share it with their own children.

Having just read the book for myself, I can see where those people are coming from. The Runaway Robot tells a great story, and it tells it through the first-person account of an unusual character--the titular runaway robot.

Rex is a domestic robot, given to Paul Simpson to watch over him and keep him safe as he grows up on Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Paul's father is the governor of the colony they live in, which survives by harvesting fungus and herbs that are shipped back to Earth for medicines. Life on Ganymede is hard, and most of the colonists dream of the day they'll be able to go back to Earth.

Rex and Paul happily grew up together--turning caves into secret hideouts, reading to each other, engaging in deep conversations--and seem to be more best friends than they are man and machine by the time Paul reaches his teens. But when the Simpson family gets recalled to Earth, Paul's father explains that the costs of shipping Rex back home are too high, and Rex is sold to a farmer, to spend the rest of his days harvesting crops in relative solitude.

Paul is crushed, but Rex's reaction is even stranger. Robots aren't supposed to have feelings or free will—but Rex, despite convincing himself that Paul will do quite well on Earth without his childhood robot, decides he simply has to see the boy again. When he arrives at the spaceport, he does indeed catch a glimpse of Paul--sneaking off the ship and back into the caves of Ganymede.

What follows is adventure, as Paul tries to make it back to Earth with his robot and Rex tries to reconcile his unrecognized capacity for feeling with his inherent sense of duty as a robot. 

It's a character study something akin to what you'll find in Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, where Mike the supercomputer must deal with his increasingly human personality. The scope of The Runaway Robot is smaller, but it's just as fascinating to watch as Rex tries to deal with emotions and explain them away as a robot's limited capacity for feeling--which Paul repeatedly says will do "until the real thing comes along"--without realizing that what he's feeling the whole time is very real. It's the intelligent Rex's innocence when it comes to experiencing life and the love between him and Paul that make this book so endearing.

There were a few minor speedbumps along the way, though. There were a couple of passages that I had to read back over because it seemed like a character had just done something they couldn't or shouldn't have done--for instance, at one point Paul takes his helmet off when he's in the open atmosphere of a planet that has to use biodomes to sustain life in its cities. The last chapter is anti-climatic and really just a bit sappy, especially in comparison with the previous one, but it's a necessary addition to the story.

The Runaway Robot is an excellent book for teens who like older sci-fi, and a great story to share between younger children and parents who read the book themselves as a kid. It's a bit hard to track down a copy, but well worth the read.

[Buy The Runaway Robot at Amazon.com]