Wei Yahua

'''Wei Yahua. "Wo Jueding yu Jiqiren Qizi Lihun" ("I Decide to Divorce My Robot Wife")'''. Beijing Wenxue January 1981; fixup 1981. Sequel: "Wenrou zhi Xiang de Meng" ("Dream of a Soft Country.") Yanhe May-July 1982; collected 1999."

The robots here are what we'd call "androids" — cf. the source of the word "robot," R. U. R. — and are used to represent women in allegories on gender in China of the period. Note use for satiric and political purposes of Asimov's Laws of Robotics.

These stories are discussed — along with "A Special Case" (1980) — in their historical contexts and in some detail in Jonathan Clements's "Flesh and Metal: Marriage and Female Emancipation in the Science Fiction of Wei Yahua," Foundation # 65 (Autumn 1995): pp. 61- 79. Clement notes the courtroom drama in the work of Wei Yahua; for that aspect, cf. and contrast Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Measure of a Man"; Futurama: "Overclockwise"; and Asimov's The Bicentennial Man.

RDE, Initial Compiler, 28Feb19