Title: Iron Man
Author: Eando (Earl and Otto) Binder
Date of First Publication: December 1955
Place of Publication: Future Science Fiction, #28
Type: Short Story
Characters: No Character
Themes: ANDROID; POSTHUMAN; RACE/POLITICS
Critical Summary: One day at work, Charley Becker announces his need for oil and begins to act like one of the many robots he built while working at the Winton Robot Works factory with Hank Norton and Pete Osgood. His coworkers think he was playing a joke on them and dismiss his behavior. He goes home to his wife, Lora Becker, and continues his perceived roleplay as a robot. She thinks it’s a joke as well, as he insists on a robot name X-88, until Charley drinks oil, prompting her to scream and seek help from Dr. John Grady, a psychiatrist. Grady takes guesses at reasons for his behavior, questioning Charley to squeeze contradictions and possible confessions from him, unsuccessfully. The tests escalate, from physical tests, to sexual tests, finally climaxing at violent tests. Grady finds that Charley has turned to biological metal and concludes that Lora had been a widow for 3 days, since the beginning of the entire incident.
The text plays with the concept of the value of not just artificial intelligence, but technology in general. It binds them together and brings up morality issues regarding the value of robotic life, whether it can be considered life or not, and finalizes the implications when this human man is found to have transformed into a robot. In this way, it disrupts the characters’ previously held moralities, as this had never happened before, thereby throwing the entirety of Race/Politics into chaos.
The story begins immediately with a human apparently pretending to be a robot, something modern culture finds hilarious (see The Robot dance). In this case, the dance is not fake, and followed to the logical end, where Lora Becker becomes like Elizabeth Frankenstein. They are both victims of tragedy brought to them through their husbands. The amount of agency is unclear, so this parallel is vague at best, but the Frankenstein themes of the Android and Posthuman are undeniably brought into primary focus in this text, as they are combined together. The human has become the android in behavior, but this is not obvious until Grady thoroughly tests both his physical and behavioral traits. The doctor thoroughly explores what differentiates humans and robots with the initially human Charley, and in his transformation, the lines between the Android and the human are blurred, resulting in this post-human iron-man.
Administrative Notes: Mark Zschaechner, CSUF; Amanda Howard, CSUF (editing)