THE POSITRONIC MAN

Third and final collaboration between the late Asimov and Silverberg (Nightfall, 1990; The Ugly Little Boy, 1992), this based on Asimov's famous long story "The Bicentennial Man." Here, we get the biography of Andrew Martin—an apparently ordinary humaniform housekeeping robot whose experimental brain leads him to demonstrate capabilities hitherto considered unrobotic: he first becomes an artist, then a businessman; finally, he embarks upon a consciousness-raising campaign to have himself declared human in all respects. Like its predecessors, this novel-length rewrite doesn't significantly improve upon the original, but merely expands upon it. Still, there's bound to be an audience for Asimov's last novel, even if he didn't actually write it.