Why Does a Nobel Prize Winner Write a Sci-Fi Novel About Robots?

And he’s not the only one—robots are hot in highbrow fiction

I loved books about robots when I was a child. Around age 10, I read Adam Link Robot by Eando Binder, and was absolutely rapturous about a mechanical humanoid who becomes self-aware. I considered revisiting that tattered paperback before writing this essay, but I didn’t have the heart to scrutinize such a fond memory of my youth.

There’s no way that boo…