Synopsis

An Earthman and a colonial from Ganymede, born twins but reared millions of miles apart, confront each other on the giant testing ground of Mars—to answer an age-old scientific question.

“The machines do their best,” he said, but not too vehemently. “Sure, but that’s all they can do. When the emairgency comes, a man’s got t’ do a damn lot better than his best or he’s a goner.”

History

First publication: Astonishing Stories, April 1941

Review

This story is kind of simple, and I hate the “Ganymede” accent that seems more like U. S. South. I hate decifering accents in fiction anyway. Just slows down the reading. But it does make a good point that as we allow our machines and AI and robots to do more for us, we need to remember that they can break down. When they do people need to remember how to do the things they do. We will have to resort to slide rules and trig tables like we did before calculators and use our ingenuity to solve problems in ways that machines just can’t do.