Title: Fondly Fahrenheit

Author: Alfred Bester

Date of First Publication: 1954

Place of Publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Type: Short story

Characters: No Character

Themes: ANDROID; POSTHUMAN; BYRONIC HERO

Critical Summary: Alfred Bester’s short story subverts Asimov’s positive “robot” stories by presenting a murderous “android.” (When a murdered child is found in the beginning of the story, searchers find the child with android blood; one says, “Androids can’t kill. They’re made that way” and another responds, “Looks like one android was made wrong.”) James Vandaleur is the smalltime criminal owner of the murderous android. But, really, it’s the owner’s murderous impulses that are being carried out by the robot, as the two are linked through a persistent mixing up of POVs and pronouns throughout the story. It is as if a new kind of humanity is emerging in the lack of separation between owner and creature. Prohibitions against killing in the android are circumvented when the temperature rises too high (thus the title). A plan to bring his made being to a permanently cold climate fail when the many murders committed across the solar system catch up with the duo, and the android is shot and burns. But the last lines of the story reveal a merged personality, presumably the one that began as Vandaleur, escaping, still speaking of murderous impulses like the android when temperatures spike.

Administrative Notes: Dr. David Sandner