I wonder if this story was an homage to Asimov's classic "Three Laws" short stories. For those of you who haven't read these stories (shame on you!
), here's a brief rundown of their general template along with my reasoning:
- Present a world in which robots have the Three Laws (basically, they do what they're told and don't hurt people):
Although not explicit in the story, I think this was implied. Pre-emotions Ralph (The Big Guy) was polite, did exactly what he was told, and showed no signs of being aggressive towards people, even when being fouled in basketball games.
- Present a robot who has a modified form of the Three Laws (i.e., they can break the rules):
Clearly, modifying Ralph to give him emotions-- and apparently also free will-- fulfilled this step! He was able to disobey orders (running away, playing poorly in basketball) and able to hurt people (he fouled).
- Explore the Rammifications of that modification:
As mentioned in the last bullet, we see Ralph disobeying. Moreover, we see that by giving robots emotions they are motivated to disobey in order to experience some emotions, which is a very interesting consequence of the modification.
If my thoughts make sense and The Big Guy was indeed intended to be a "Three Laws" story, then I think it pulled off the template pretty well. It was nice to hear a new spin (robots in basketball) on a familiar concept.
I wonder if it's a coincidence that there was a seemingly unimportant line in the story about Ralph being able to eat with people that was eerily similar to this line from "The Caves of Steel", an Asimov robot detective book, said by Daneel Olivaw, a robot:
"...Yes I can perform the mechanical operations of chewing and swallowing. My capacity is, of course, quite limited, and I would have to remove the ingested material from what you might call my stomach sooner or later."
(Daneel even offers a human the food later on because he didn't digest it)