“The Proud Robot” by Lewis Padgett is story #50 of 52 from The World Treasury of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell (1989), an anthology my short story club is group reading. Stories are discussed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “The Proud Robot” was first published in Astounding Science-Fiction (October 1943). Lewis Padgett was the pen name of husband-and-wife writers Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, but most fans think it was written by Kuttner.

Back in the mid-1970s I discovered Robots Have No Tails in an old library downtown. It was a rebound copy of the original Gnome Press edition without a dustjacket. I read the first story, “The Proud Robot” and loved it because I was also a recent fan of The Thin Man movies with William Powell and Myrna Loy. I mention this because Kuttner obviously based the zany alcoholic mad-scientist Galloway Gallegher on the movie version of Nick Charles. I think most people might agree with me on that. However, I have another theory. I believe Joe, the vain robot was based on Bungle, the glass cat from The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Both the robot and cat had transparent bodies so you could see their insides, and both were obsessed with looking at themselves.

I’ve read “The Proud Robot” several times over the years. Sometimes I like it, and sometimes I don’t — it all depends on my mood. Sometimes a drunk protagonist is amusing, and other times, Gallegher is just too damn annoying. Joe the robot is always annoying — but he was meant to be.

Harrison Brock, a television/movie mogul hires Gallegher to invent technology that will bypass patents that bootleg theaters are using to put his Vox-View Pictures out of business. Gallegher has accomplished the task but doesn’t remember how. Gallagher works when he’s drunk using his subconscious mind as a creative power. Most of the story is about Gallegher trying to remember what he did. All he knows is he came to after building a vain robot. Kuttner wrote a lot of pulp mysteries besides writing science fiction, so this story is really a SF mystery.

The central plot of the story lets Kuttner speculate about the future of television in 1943. He imagines the television industry paying for itself through household subscriptions, which was a path taken in England. He didn’t anticipate the power of commercials. Kuttner also imagined how the movie industry would fight back against television by offering viewers greater technological features to leave their homes. The speculation about the future of TV is fun but isn’t enough to carry the story.

How Gallegher solves the mystery is silly but logical enough within this silly story. Like I said whether this will be amusing will depend on your mood. I wished that I had an audio version of “The Proud Robot” because a good narrator would help me to hear this story in its funniest light.

I’m not keen on Kuttner. My hunch is I like the C. L. Moore part of the team, that’s Lewis Padgett. If a Lewis Padgett story is serious and moving, I assume Moore did most of the writing. If it’s intellectual, silly, or pulpy, I tend to think it’s Kuttner. Our next story, “Vintage Season,” was written by the same team. Because that story is so wonderful, I feel it was mostly written by Moore.

I feel “The Proud Robot” was Kuttner’s hack work, and sometimes, if the mood strikes me, it’s amusing hack work.

James Wallace Harris, 8/29/23