X Minus One - Marionettes, Inc. (#30)

[@cm9439]

This story was also adapted for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents.". It was a very good episode.

[@betsya7054]

This was wonderful. Ty

[@claycoates5056]

Fantastic

[@quicksilvertongue3248]

Very typical story for Bradbury...a core of tremendously human emotion, with plot holes you could fly a Toynbee convector through.

[@quicksilvertongue3248]

Apparently Netty doesn't pay much attention to the balance of her joint account....

[@quicksilvertongue3248]

Our narrator actually loves his wife, but Braling clearly doesn't, so upon discovering that B2 loves his wife, who you'll remember threatened a rape accusation in order to blackmail him into marrying her, and has been physically assaulting him ever since, I don't know why Braling doesn't just leave B2 to live his marriage indefinitely, while he gets a new apartment when he returns from Rio. Braling could keep his job, B2 could get another job on the far side of town under an assumed name, and they could call each other periodically to ensure that B1's job and B2's wife don't suspect anything. The whole situation could have worked out beautifully, if B1 hadn't had a fit of stubbornness at the very idea of the robot he purchased having a mind of its own.

[@quicksilvertongue3248]

Technically the opening is true....there was a lot of technical innovation from 55 to 90, but not much actually changed. That didn't happen until 2023, when we disemboweled our civilization and left it to slowly bleed to death over slightly more than a decade.

[@quicksilvertongue3248]

They really should have hired one very talented voice actor for twice the recording time and twice the money, rather than having separate voices for Braling and B2. A good VA could make them sound different enough even for radio, just by varying the diction to represent the false persona of the robot and the real self Braling only shows to Henry.

[@quicksilvertongue3248]

If you designed robots to fool women into letting their husbands out of their bed for multiple nights, maybe you might think about making those robots have an audible ticking in their chest.