Time to Spring into Scifi

Welcome to Spring! Starting today, you can Spring into Scifi by purchasing the new anthology by Cloaked Press, available here. The book contains one of my short stories.

My Story

My tale, “Its Tender Metal Hand,” concerns an aged man, Maleko Koamalu, whose remaining family can’t care for him.

They pay for a caregiver robot.

Maleko hates the robot, but the robot persists in taking care of his needs. Robots can do many things, but can they help an old man reconcile with his child before it’s too late?

If the story’s touching ending prompts a tear or two, well, sorry not sorry.

Inspiration

I wrote it after my wife and I served as caregivers for my mother-in-law. It occurred to me that a well-designed robot could perform all the required tasks. In a couple of ways, a robot might prove superior to a human caregiver. Robots often excel at the things humans struggle with, and vice versa.

Elderly people sometimes repeat themselves, forgetting that they’ve just said the same thing. This can annoy human caregivers, but a robot will listen patiently, over and over, responding each time as if hearing it afresh.

Also, human caregivers often find it difficult to lift and convey heavy patients between bed and wheelchair, or wheelchair and toilet. A well-built robot could do this with ease.

The Anthology

The book contains thirteen other short stories I look forward to reading. Edited by Andrew Ferrell and published by Cloaked Press, this new science fiction anthology, Spring into Scifi, is available here and here so far, with more distributors picking it up soon. As I may have mentioned, it includes a story written by—

Poseidon’s Scribe