The Big Idea: James Patrick Kelly

Humans have been fascinated by robots for as long as the idea of a machine with a heart has existed. Hugo award-winning author James Patrick Kelly is no exception, evidenced by his newest collection of short stories all about robots and AI. He even threw in two brand new pieces just for The Book of Bots, so even if you’re a long time fan you won’t want to miss this release. JAMES PATRICK KELLY: It’s 2026 and we’ve got robots. We’ve got AI. We‘ve got digital agents. Why are we surprised? Should we blame ourselves, fellow citizens of the science fiction community? Maybe. Weren’t our writers supposed to prepare us for these garrulous chatbots? LLMs that could make a movie in a minute from a single prompt? Shouldn’t readers have voted with their credit cards for the kinds of cutting edge stories that acknowledged that Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws were at best aspirational? I knew Isaac, and revere him as giant of the Golden Age, but I Robot was published in 1950. And why did we all make fun…