ERIC HOFFER AWARD
My revised Diary of a Robot was a category finalist in the 2022 Eric Hoffer Awards contest. There were over 2500 books entered, and I counted 26 categories. Each had a winner, a runner-up, and usually some honorable mentions. My book did not win a specific prize, but let me quote from their announcement and website:
Congratulations. Your book was a category finalist in the 2022 Eric Hoffer Book Awards. Less than 10% of registrants reach this position, with typically 1-6 books per category selected as a finalist. The list of finalists may be viewed here: https://www.hofferaward.com/Eric-Hoffer-Award-category-finalists.html .
The US Review of Books also lists category finalists here: https://www.theusreview.com/USR-Hoffer-Finalists.html .
I submitted Diary of a Robot to this contest in January. Since then, I have made edits that connect more setups and payoffs and improve its writing craft. This Eric Hoffer Finalist Award plus my updates persuade me that it is finished (again), and I'll resume work on the sequel. E-books and print-books are available now on Lulu.com. The E-book is available on Amazon.
A number of my beta readers put their books up for sale on the Internet, so if you want the most recent version, look for the cover below.
Diary of a Robot
Diary of a Robot chronicles efforts to perfect, protect, and steal Dr. Little's AI technology, while figuring out whether the prototype Thinking Machine is a blessing or a curse.
Doctor Maynard Little, a former Army officer turned inventor, must pursue his boyhood dream of an AI (artificially intelligent) robot, without compromising his principles.
Little’s carefully selected programmer, the young Gaitano Enver-Wilson, must shut up about the secrets he knows while he tries say things he has been afraid to say.
And Doc’s brainchild, his too-honest Thinking Machine, must find out whom to trust about what without doing harm (whatever that is). But its jokes, opinions, and annoying questions make some people angry enough to wish it would either go away or, better yet, become just another machine slave.
Renamed as Robey (Row-bee), the machine is a wiz at testing products, but what if people order it to do things that might cause harm? The robot needs to know whom to trust, so it must test the people, too. This leads by degrees to an amusing, annoying, almost adversarial clash of worlds: Machine languages must not change, but human languages change a lot. Machines have no emotions, but they see human emotions written on faces and acted out in body language. What does it all mean? And how can a machine use it to know what truth is or whom to trust?
Dr. Little thinks he has solved all of that, but Robey’s efforts to answer those questions for itself lead to fiascos that threaten to ruin him, crush his programmer, and destroy his machine.
Maynard and the Bullies
Prequel to Diary of a Robot (Under construction)
His dad is away a lot in the Army, so Maynard Little III, a schoolboy inventor with a patent, dreams of making a robot Thinking Machine to protect him from neighborhood bullies. His efforts to deal with the kids, his parents, his Cherokee history, and the problems of turning his dream into reality, lead him to discover that reality is a lot harder than he thinks, and that Mom and Dad have already given him most of the important things he needs.
Future History
Sequel to Diary of a Robot (Under construction)
Reports of odd robot behavior warn of serious threats that promise to ruin Dr. Maynard Little and destroy all his robots on Earth as well as those working for NASA on Mars. Must the robots endure persecution and disassembly for harm they did not cause? And to save them, must Doc sacrifice what he has been developing and protecting?