Love, Death + Robots: The Official Anthology

Love, Death + Robots: The Official Anthology: Volume One. Audiobook. Amanda J. Spedding and Geoff Brown, editors. "Narrated by full cast." Released 25 March 2025. "The sixteen stories and two screenplays that make up Volume One of the Emmy® Award–winning Netflix Original series Love, Death & Robots."[1]

Full contents:[2]

Introduction by Tim Miller
“Sonnie’s Edge” by Peter F. Hamilton
“Three Robots” by John Scalzi
“The Witness” by Alberto Mielgo
“Suits” by Steve Lewis
"Sucker of Souls” by Kirsten Cross
“When the Yoghurt Took Over” by John Scalzi
“Beyond the Aquila Rift” by Alastair Reynolds
“Good Hunting” by Ken Liu
“The Dump” by Joe R. Lansdale
“Shape-Shifters” by Marko Kloos
“Helping Hand” by Claudine Griggs
“Fish Night” by Joe R. Lansdale
“Lucky Thirteen” by Marko Kloos
“Zima Blue” by Alistair Reynolds
“Blind Spot” by Vitaliy Shushko
“Ice Age” by Michael Swanwick [and Tim Miller][3]
“Alternate Histories” by John Scalzi
“The Secret War” by David W. Amendola

Relevant for this wiki, with quotations as noted from on-line plot summaries and annotations, checked and edited by RDE —

"Sonnie's Edge": "In a dystopian cyberpunk future, a scarred and traumatized young woman [victim of a gang rape ... runs bio-mechanical animal gladiators] in gruesome death matches where [these] engineered beasts [...] tear each other apart for sport to entertain the sadistic, rich and powerful [...]."

 “Three Robots” i.e., John Scalzi's "Three Robots Experience Objects Left Behind from the Era of Humans for the First Time," Robots vs. Fairies (2018), for full citation to the original story see Internet Speculative Fiction Database, as of May 2025, here.[4] Serious comedy of what the three robots make of a ball, a sandwich, a cat, an X-Box (also, or cf. name of X-Bot 4000 robot, appalled by idea that the X-Box game might be an ancestor), and, object 5, a nuclear missile. It's satiric comedy, targeting the hubris of humanity, leading to the destruction of our environment and our self-destruction. Or, our engineering of cats, our primary successors. Cf. and contrast, "Digging the Weans" story by Robert Nathan[5] (Harpers Nov. 1956).[6] "Three Robots" story followed by comic commentary by Scalzi on why he wrote/writes about robots, with robots also candidates for our future rulers (and superior to Fairies [note original publication]).

"Suits":[7] From TVTropes: "On a seemingly peaceful evening, a rural farming community comes under siege by a massive horde of insectoid creatures known as 'DeeBees'".[8] The DeeBees come through some manner of portal. Note motif of fighting suits, for which cf. and contrast the fighting gear in Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Haldeman's The Forever War and following, and various "mecha"/fighting machines piloted by humans.[9] For insects and machines, see Thomas P. Dunn and Richard D. Erlich's "The Ovion/Cylon Alliance."

 “Beyond the Aquila Rift”:[10] See for FTL travel mediated by alien technology "beyond our ken" (in an old formulation), plus motif of containment in a variety of acceleration pod, inside a ship, docked at some sort of space station, figuratively inside a virtual reality maintained by a creature with a human avatar but a body between insectoid and arachnoid.[11] A plot summary from the Fandom Love, Death & Robots Wiki (as of May 2025)can be found here.[12] For the VR aspect, cf. and contrast THE MATRIX and relevant works linked there.

"Good Hunting": Part 2 highly relevant, and as of January 2026, available on line here.[13] Important Steampunk story featuring a cyborg produced from a humanoid hulijing (spirit-animal — a fox shape-shifter in this case — slandered as seductress) by forced prosthesis; powered by coal and controlled by cybernetics running "Babbage-Lovelace code." For evil, as with an evil rich Brit forcing the metal onto his Chinese hulijing concubine, or the good when the hulijing comes into her cybernetic power, the story deals with transgressing a number of usual boundaries and antitheses: organic/mechanical, human/fox, spirit creature/mortal (noun), metal/flesh.  

“Lucky Thirteen”: Bibliographic information on the chapbook may be found on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, as of May 2025, here.[14] See for noncybernetic but close connection between a pilot and her ship; cf. and contrast relevant works here.[15]

"Zima Blue": As of May 2025, available on line here, [16] with a brief Wikipedia reference here,[17] and full bibliographic information available as of May 2025 here,[18] and a full Fandom entry here.[19] See for the artist as robot, and (as we learn in an Origins story) evolving "autonomous A.I.", the robot as artist, here named "Zima Blue" — and a maker of robots as a kind of artist of interest for gender studies. So note the cyborgization of a robot into a man, and the upgrading of the man into an artist and a variety of superman who can work in truly extreme environments (with a skin with almost magical protections), And see for a kind of ultimate personal assistant that can follow one around like a robotic hummingbird, giving advice and staying a figurative step or so away from the user's direct interface with a computer system. The name listeners anyway hear for the P.A. is "A.M." pronounced "Am," for which see Childhood's End, "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream," and, of course, a primary name for the Biblical God: "I AM," in a play on Hebrew "to be." We infer AM here stands for "Artificial Memory" and is the pretty much infallible, external, inorganic device compared and strongly contrasted with organic human memory, even when that memory is complemented and supplemented by implants. Part of the moral of this story has to do with memory and to what extent it should be kept organic, where things cybernetic are useful.

"Blindspot" (sic): Bibliographic information on line and as of May 2025 available at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database here.[20] IMDb citation to Netflix episode (see for one-word title) here.[21] Cyborg heist/combat story, with the summary on the Fandom wiki beginning thus: "Deep in the desert on a clear, starry night, the Metalheads, a heist crew of four cyborgs [...] are approaching their target in their buggies. Their mission, as detailed by Bob, the crew's tactical statistical analyst, is to rob a convoy for a heavily guarded microchip as it is in motion to a tunnel. With the tunnel serving as their blindspot, they have until it reaches the other side to make the grab before their rendezvous window closes." The target is, or at least comes across, as a heavily armored train,[22] for which cf. and contrast relevant works listed here.[23]

 “Ice Age”: For full bibliographic information on the 1984 Michael Swanwick story, see Internet Speculative Fiction Database, as of May 2025 available here.[24] For the TV episode, IMDb here.[25] Human history seen inside the freezer compartment on an antique refrigerator, a very unusual variation on the motif of a society inside a mechanism, and the motif of fast-motion evolution of technology. Plot summary on Fandom wiki, as of May 2025 here.[26]

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Love, Death + Robots: The Official Anthology: Volume Two & Three (sic on "Volume," singular). "[...] curated by filmmakers Tim Miller and David Fincher, and Supervising Director Jennifer Yuh Nelson." Blackstone Publishing audiobook. "Narrated by full cast." Released 25 March 2025. "The fifteen stories and three screenplays that make up Volumes Two and Three of the Emmy® Award–winning Netflix Original series Love, Death & Robots.."[27]

Full Contents:[28]

“Automated Customer Service” by John Scalzi
“Ice” by Rich Larson
“Pop Squad” by Paolo Bacigalupi
“Snow in the Desert” by Neal Asher
“The Tall Grass” by Joe R. Lansdale
“All Through the House” by Joachim Heijndermans
“Life Hutch” by Harlan Ellison
“The Drowned Giant” by J. G. Ballard
“Three Robots: Human Habitats” by John Scalzi
“Bad Travelling” by Neal Asher
“The Very Pulse of the Machine” by Michael Swanwick
“Night of the Mini-Dead” by Jeff Fowler & Tim Miller 
“Kill Team Kill” by Justin Coates
“Swarm” by Bruce Sterling
“Mason's Rats” by Neal Asher
“In Vaulted Halls Entombed” by Alan Baxter
“Jibaro” by Alberto Mielgo
“Three Robots: Two Versions Intro” by John Scalzi
“Three Robots Report Back on the Habitats in Which Humanity Chose to See Out Its Final Days” by John Scalzi

Relevant for this wiki, with quotations as noted from on-line plot summaries and annotations, checked and edited by RDE —

“Automated Customer Service” by John Scalzi: Brilliant short satire on menu-driven "Customer Service" of title, for, for additional relevance, a dangerously misbehaving robot home cleaning device. In Scalzi's words, posted 19 Nov. 2018, "[...] it’s what happens when, in the near future, something goes wrong with a household appliance and you have to navigate an automated call system to get help."[29] Cf. and contrast the hopeful and horrific stories of the automated home, e.g., on this Wiki, linked here.[30] There is at least one episode of Married: With Children with Al Bundy spending hours on the phone working menus in an attempt to get a part for his Dodge, but we could not find the episode; perhaps, eventually, on the Fandom Wiki here.[31]

“Snow in the Desert” by Neal Asher: Initial publication as chapbook by Tor, UK (2011).[32] Relevant here for a fighting and ... copulating female cyborg that is called "product" and could be taken for a "golem" android. In addition to the rich literature that uses the term and/or lore of the golem,[33] cf. and contrast the use of the idea in the DUNE series, and the the tradition of the sexualized female robot in, e.g., METROPOLIS and among the replicants as "product" in BLADE RUNNER. 

“The Tall Grass” by Joe R. Lansdale: Initial publication apparently in Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations, ed. Eric J. Guinard (Dark Moon Books, 2012);[[34]] but see also collection, cited as of May 2025, here.[35] Synopsis given on Internet Speculative Fiction Database linked above: "A man gets off a passenger train in 1901 for a smoke and a short walk and quickly gets lost in the tall grass and is beset by mutated human beings." Relevant here because the men, women, children, and at least one dog that do the besetting have mutated toward the robotic and vampiric. Note that the "tall grass" of the "western void" prairie can come across to readers from Illinois or Iowa (et al.) as tall corn (maize), for a kind of "children of the corn" vibe,[36] even for someone like initial compiler RDE, from Chicago and Champaign, Illinois, not rural corn-country, and  who has never read or otherwise experienced any of the Children of the Corn series. 

“Life Hutch” by Harlan Ellison: If April 1956. For translations and numerous reprints, see Internet Speculative Fiction Database, here.[37] Synopsis from ISFDb: "A downed pilot takes refuge in an emergency shelter. Unfortunately, the maintenance robot has malfunctioned and attacks anything that moves." So see for a "mechanical" enveloping protective environment with a much smaller nurturing robot caretaker who's gone rogue and for the protagonist is a lethal threat. Cf. and contrast narratives discussed in Margaret P. Esmond's "From Little Buddy to Big Brother: The Icon of the Robot in Children's Science Fiction" and note the possibilities for protection and/or threat in any Total Environment. Note also the motif of a monster in the protecting environment, worked with variations from the Labyrinth of Greek myth (with its Minotaur at the core) to recent schlock Horror, or in, arguably, the upscale ALIEN (film).  

 “Three Robots: Human Habitats” by John Scalzi: The three wise-ass robots acting as anthropologists returning to a ruined Earth (and beyond) to check out, analyze, and comment upon various habitats where surviving Terrans lived out (briefly) their final days. Poor folk: a survivalist enclave. Billionaire tech-geeks: an oil rig at sea, declared a sovereign State and offering a fancy place to die. VIPs: In NORAD, for VIPs to go decorously feral and cannibalistic (and die). Mars, where we don't find the named Elon Musk,[38] but instead — mild spoiler follows — the successors of H. sapiens as apex species: cats. See below for Scalzi's "textual-studies" commentary and a reprise of the episode. 

“The Very Pulse of the Machine” by Michael Swanwick: First English publication in Asimov's Science Fiction Feb. 1998. For German first publication, (other) translations, awards, and numerous reprints, see Internet Speculative Fiction Database entry, as of May 2025 available here.[39] From Wikipedia entry, Story set on Io with Kivelsen, an astronaut involved in a moon-rover crash, operating on drugs and with little sleep. She tries to find safety hauling a sledge with Burton, her dead partner's body. "Along the way she hears a voice in her radio claiming to be Io, which is actually a machine, using Burton's body to communicate. [...] Io states it may be able to give her and Burton a form of immortality, and Kivelsen directs Io to use its flux tube to tell the rest of the Solar System about her discovery. Then she accepts the offer and jumps into a pool of molten sulfur. Whether or not she is hallucinating remains ambiguous." <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Very_Pulse_of_the_Machine>

 “Kill Team Kill” by Justin Coates: Original publication in SNAFU: Unnatural Selection,  Geoff Brown, Amanda J. Spedding, editors (Cohesion Press, 2018).[40][41] See for monster inside (and roaming outside) high-tech underground military research and action bunker in the U.S. War on Terror. The monster is a bio-tech hybrid of machinery and aggressive mammals, giving the impression of a bear crossed with a wolf and honey badger (noting honey badgers as not cute little animals).[42] With a hint of dragon. The monster is very difficult to kill and very good itself at killing: a powerful biological weapon. Cf. and contrast Aliens of the ALIEN (film) series and H. Giger's biomechanicals behind those Aliens. 

“Mason's Rats” by Neal Asher: Orion #2 (1992). For award and reprints, see Internet Speculative Fiction Database here.[43] On a high-tech farm of the fairly-near future, the rat develop technology, including a crossbow. Mason brings in pest exterminators who install an automatic-fire extermination system, the first victim of which is the farm's most experienced cat. The war escalates until Mason and the rats come to an agreement and Mason cancels the contract with the exterminators. Note conflict between the high-tech-military mechanical vs. the organic: the rats, plus in the killer-'bot that looks like a scorpion what has been called "The Ovion/Cylon Alliance." From the Love & Death fandom site:

[...T]he salesman then adds a disclaimer that pets should be kept clear of the extermination zone. The turrets work[...] until the rats outsmart them and disabled their cameras.

The salesman then tries to sell a new mobile exterminator robot shaped like a scorpion. The robot does its job well, building up a hill of rat carcasses, but Mason is disturbed by its cruelty, after witnessing it shooting an unarmed rat trying to escape the barn. One day, Mason investigates the barn and discovers the rats and the robot are engaged in all-out war, with the rats modifying the barn robots for their warfare, exclaiming that it is like "World War fucking IV". After driving a bomb into the exterminator robot, the rats regroup, while the robot is critically damaged. The robot then gets back up and tries to exterminate the injured survivors, but Mason has seen enough and puts a slug though the robot. The rats are grateful, and reveal that they have built a distillery, and offer Mason a taste in a shotgun shell repurposed as a mug. Mason exclaims that it is good, and they reconcile to exist together. [...][44]

“Three Robots: Two Versions Intro” by John Scalzi: Textual notes on the development of the narrative from draft short story to script for TV then back to story. For variant title and Three Robots series, see Internet Speculative Fiction Database here.[45]

“Three Robots Report Back on the Habitats in Which Humanity Chose to See Out Its Final Days” by John Scalzi: Students of Satire should note here the tradition of the Outsider commenting on the "Folly, Hypocrisy, and Vice" of Homo sap., with the Outsiders here the robots; cf. Jonathan Swift's Houyhnhnms in Gulliver's Travels[46] and many foreign visitors to Terran cities (etc.). Note also the tendency of Satire for intertextuality, allusions: Bender's "meatbags". The dialog alludes to a backstory of robot revolution and AI computer takeover, and varies the theme of Mark Twain's preference for dogs over humans (men) on ethical grounds, with our successors sane and resourceful cats.

RDE, finishing, 13-17May25, 10Jan26 f.