I saw Kill Bill Vol. 2 yesterday for the second time—I had seen it before, but █████ hadn't—although that's not what I want to post about now.

Before the main event, there was a preview for the Will Smith SFXtravaganza I, Robot, coming to a googolplex near you sometime this summer. The movie is somewhat vaguely based on the classic and beloved robot stories by Isaac Asimov. The robot stories explore the consequences of the Three Laws of Robotics, formulated together by Asimov and Golden Age editor John W. Campbell, Jr. If you don't know the Three Laws, I won't repeat them here, but suffice it to say that the stories are elegant considerations of the unexpected logical implications of those immutable behavior-governing laws imprinted on the positronic brains of Asimov's robots.

The preview I saw featured Will Smith interrogating someone offscreen about a murder. The someone turns out to be a robot, and for a while it actually looks as if the movie will be a thoughtful consideration of robotics in an Asimovian vein. That's before the executives of U.S. Robotics & Mechanical Men start to look like maniacal villians, and factories full of robots begin busting loose to wreak cybernetic mayhem in futuristic city streets, and Will Smith bursts into action, saving the day with firepower and acrobatics, not the cool, keen ratiocination of Powell and Donovan, of Susan Calvin, and of Elijah Bailey.

Ask █████. I practically wept openly. "Never," I said. I will not see this film. I will boycott it as firmly as I boycotted Robin Williams in the desecration of The Bicentennial Man. I know no one in Hollywood will give a shit, but I won't be a party to the toppling of Asimov's vision.

If I had to point to one single story that began my love affair with science fiction, it was "Reason." I own a copy of the April 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction in which that story first appeared. I was entirely seduced, as a gradeschooler, by the notion that the application of logic could solve any seemingly insuperable problem.

In the I, Robot preview, this notion is blasted to flinders. Reason is cowering somewhere in the corner, frightened for its life.