This week, Futures is delighted to welcome back Alvaro Zinos-Amaro with his story A rossum’s best friend. regular readers will remember Alvaro’s previous stories for Futures, which included conversations with a black hole, the darker side of cryogenics, some very unusual shops and a caffeine-fuelled collaboration with Alex Shvartsman. You can keep up to date with Alvaro’s work at his website or by following him on Twitter. Here, he reveals the inspiration behind his latest tale — as ever it pays to read the story first.

Writing A rossum’s best friend

Not too long ago a man walked into a used bookstore, picked out a few items, and asked the clerk for help. 

“I’m looking for more titles in the Foundation series,” he said. “I read them all a long time ago but don’t remember them well and want to re-read them. Any idea what the correct order is?”

I wasn’t that man, but I happened to be in conversation with the aforementioned clerk, who, aware of my knowledge of science fiction, directed the question to me. 

I examined the customer’s selections. One of the books he had picked up was not by Asimov, but by Gregory Benford, who penned the first installment of a Foundation trilogy authorized by the Asimov estate after Asimov’s death. This suggested to me that the man intended to read all novels connected with the Foundation series in one way or another, rather than strictly the Foundation novels per se. I therefore pointed out that to read the Foundation series in its fullest sense would also mean reading the Robot series and the Empire series, since as the years wore on they all became enmeshed. We talked about this for a while, and later that day, back home, I found myself doing further research on the chronological intricacies of Asimov’s vast interlinked universe.

This, in turn, led me to start re-reading the robot short stories, attempting to do so in internal chronological order.

Two of these, in which robots are designed to provide companionship to children, got me thinking about what that might look like in reverse. I’d also recently read Octavia Butler’s stunning story Bloodchild, wherein humans have to integrate within a complex alien biological life-cycle.

After a few days the human-as-robot-companion and human-living-among-aliens themes merged in my mind and produced A rossum’s best friend.

I didn’t hide my literary tracks, by the way. The two Asimov robot stories I alluded to before were Robbie (which you may well have guessed) — and the lesser-known A boy’s best friend. Besides my story’s title, there’s a less evident tribute. Asimov typically derived his robot names from his robot model letters and numbers. Thus, in Runaround, robot SPD-13 becomes Speedy; in Liar! robot RB-34 becomes Herbie; and so on. Likewise, the name of my rossum protagonist contains within it a description of her provenance.

And for the used bookstore fiends among you — if you happen to find yourself fielding questions from inquisitive customers, beware the consequences.