Short Story Review Charles L Fontenay Service With A Smile

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1958 – Spoiler alerts I have passed much of my convalescence through reading and listening to audio books and short stories online, notably on Libravox. One gem I found was this story about survivors marooned on a distant planet. Four women survive their rocket crashing and they have only their rather over-faithful robot servant to help them. There are no men at all. The ladies virtually enslave the robot who is all to happy to get them anything. They try to get him to make them a man, and though he gets a perfect man shaped being together for them, he cannot bring it to life. The ladies bury it. Eventually a new rocket lands, with just one man on board. The women plan to share him between them, even sexually but their robot servant gets jealous and kills him. There are touches of J M Barrie’s The Admirable Chrighton here, a play about a butler who takes charge when he is the only one in a rich household able to show any survival skills but a desire to manipulate everyone to his own ends. Arthur Chappell