Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Robots Have No Tails

by Henry Kuttner

4.09 of 5 stars 4.09 · rating details · 109 ratings · 13 reviews

Contents:
The Proud Robot (1943)
Gallegher Plus (1943)
The World Is Mine (1943)
Ex Machina (1948)
Time Locker (1943)

Paperback, #447-75464-095, 221 pages

Published 1973 by Panther (first published 1952)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 244)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Apr 07, 2012 Mohammed rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, 2012, favorite-books, short-story-collections, humor

This book is a collection of 4 Galloway Gallagher short stories, a drunken scientist who is brilliant inventor only when he is drunk, lets his brilliant subconscious take control of him. When he is sober he barely knows what protons,neutrons are. The stories are usually puzzles dealing with things that his brilliant self has invented that gets him in trouble with people because he can't remember what he did. It sounds different our times to make fun of a drunk but these stories are wacky humorou...more

2 likes · like · see review

Mar 26, 2012 Sandy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Originally released in 1952 by the early sci-fi/fantasy publisher Gnome Press, the meaninglessly titled "Robots Have No Tails" collects the five stories that Henry Kuttner wrote featuring the drunken inventor Galloway Gallegher. (As to that title, in the book's original introduction by Kuttner's equally celebrated wife, C.L. Moore, she tells us that her husband was at a loss for an appropriate name for this collection, and so told the publisher, "I can't think of one. Call it anything you like....more Originally released in 1952 by the early sci-fi/fantasy publisher Gnome Press, the meaninglessly titled "Robots Have No Tails" collects the five stories that Henry Kuttner wrote featuring the drunken inventor Galloway Gallegher. (As to that title, in the book's original introduction by Kuttner's equally celebrated wife, C.L. Moore, she tells us that her husband was at a loss for an appropriate name for this collection, and so told the publisher, "I can't think of one. Call it anything you like. Call it 'Robots Have No Tails' if you want to.") The stories here all originally appeared in the most celebrated sci-fi magazine of the era, John W. Campbell's "Astounding Science-Fiction," and despite the fact that most of Kuttner and Moore's output after their 1940 marriage was written in collaboration, Moore reveals that these Gallegher stories--four from 1943 and one from 1948--were written by Kuttner alone, under one of the team's many pen names, Lewis Padgett. Combining hard sci-fi with a large dose of slapstick, anarchic humor, these Gallegher tales have proven to be some of Kuttner's most enduring and popular creations. In each of them, the sodden scientist invents some kind of miraculous gadget while he is swizzled, and upon sobering up, cannot for the life of him remember what the device is good for. And this leads to all kinds of outrageous situations with the customers for whom the devices were commissioned in the first place!

The collection kicks off with what is probably the least of the tales, "Time Locker" (from the Jan. '43 "ASF"). In this one, Gallegher's latest gizmo--a storage cabinet that tucks objects away a few million years in the future--is used by a crooked lawyer to cache some purloined bonds. But things get a little out of hand, in this short but decidedly loopy story, and capped by one mindblower of a finale. In "The World Is Mine" (June '43 "ASF"), Gallegher's new time machine accidentally brings to Earth the Lybblas: small, furry, button-nosed, milk-and-cookie-scarfing creatures from Mars' future who want to conquer the Earth! And if this isn't enough to keep Gallegher busy, he must also contend here with a steady stream of Gallegher corpses from the future, whom the authorities promptly charge him with murdering! This is easily the zaniest story of the bunch; crazy and witty as can be, it also introduces us to Gallegher's Grandpa, a hilarious old coot who is almost as big a tippler as Gallegher himself. "The Proud Robot" (Oct. '43 "ASF") presents the reader with the character of Joe for the first time; a narcissistic, obnoxious mechanical "man" who spends most of "his" time admiring itself before a mirror and being generally unhelpful. In this tale, Gallegher is hired by a movie studio whose main source of income--what is, in essence, cable television--is being threatened by the "bootleg" movie palaces of its competitor. Probably the most oft anthologized of all the Gallegher stories, this hilarious tale presciently foresees the movie vs. television rivalry of a good decade hence. In what is perhaps the most complexly plotted story of the five, "Gallegher Plus" (Nov. '43 "ASF"), Gallegher learns, after a particularly intensive bender, that he has apparently created a dirt-guzzling contraption that also sings "St. James Infirmary"! But why he created this contraption, and what it's good for, and for which of his three increasingly irate current customers, the hungover Gallegher has no clue. This tale features some tense moments for the alcoholic genius and a narrow escape from a gang of nasty thugs...as well as an alphabetical drinking contest! Remember that old episode of "The Prisoner," the one called "The Girl Who Was Death," in which Number 6, to purge himself after drinking poison, orders a brandy, followed by "Whiskey. Vodka. Drambuie. Tia Maria. Quatro. Grand Marnier"? Well, that's nothing compared to what Gallegher does here, trying to keep up with a crooked alderman who is boozing alphabetically: absinthe, brandy, Cointreau, daiquiri, etc., all the way to the letter "Y." Who else but Gallegher could possibly keep up? The collection ends with a tale called "Ex Machina" (April '48 "ASF"), in which Gallegher, Grandpa and Joe all return one more time for another way-out adventure. In this one, Gallegher sobers up again, only to find an invisible speed drinker in his house, as well as a metallic gizmo with blue eyes staring at him. (This orbed object may bring to mind the blue-eyed doorknob from Kuttner and Moore's extremely psychedelic novella "The Fairy Chessmen," from 1946.) Here, Gallegher is commissioned by a safari expedition company to come up with a way of minimizing the inherent danger to its customers. The story finds Joe discovering philosophy for the first time, has Gallegher once again accused of murder by the dim-witted authorities, and provides another wacky explanation for all the preceding mishegas.

Unfailingly inventive and often laugh-out-loud funny, the Gallegher stories might be considered some kind of perfect entertainment. Kuttner seemed to improve every year that he wrote (starting with 1936's "The Graveyard Rats"), and his work here, hastily written as it was, remains most impressive. He flubs on occasion--such as when he tells us that the uncertainty principle was Planck's, rather than Heisenberg's, and when he suggests in one tale that Gallegher is living in the early 21st century, and in another mentions that musician Larry Adler lived "hundreds of years ago," making it more like the 22nd century--but most readers will be having too much of a good time to notice. And really, how can any book with a line like "Grandpa, a wizened little man with a brown face like a bad-tempered nutcracker" be anything BUT amusing? Fans of Golden Age sci-fi and vintage screwball comedies will most likely read these stories hungrily and with great enjoyment...just like Joe with one of his philosophy books....(less)

4 likes · like · see review

Sep 08, 2009 Johnny rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

We owe it to Erik Mona and Pierce Watters that five of Henry Kuttner’s terrific stories about a bibulous inventor and a narcissistic robot (well, technically, only three of the five feature the robot, but who’s counting?) are back in print. Robots Have No Tails was the May, 2009 offering of Planet Stories, a strange amalgam of magazine crossed with reprint anthology published by Mona and distributed by Watters under the Paizo imprint. The entire anthology has typesetting and illustration reminis...more We owe it to Erik Mona and Pierce Watters that five of Henry Kuttner’s terrific stories about a bibulous inventor and a narcissistic robot (well, technically, only three of the five feature the robot, but who’s counting?) are back in print. Robots Have No Tails was the May, 2009 offering of Planet Stories, a strange amalgam of magazine crossed with reprint anthology published by Mona and distributed by Watters under the Paizo imprint. The entire anthology has typesetting and illustration reminiscent of those great old Street & Smith, Ziff-Davis, and Argosy titles of that golden age of fiction factories. It was an age that I just missed with characters I discovered in derivative media (old radio programs, movies rebroadcast on television, and recreated for comic books). It was an age that sometimes feels more comfortable to me than the modern age (for all I love my personal computer).

The great thing about Kuttner’s short stories (and I’m not a guy who particularly likes short stories) is that he takes the familiar tropes of time travel, aliens, robots, and extraordinary inventions and turns them upside-down. Instead of the time machine story orbiting around the “grandfather paradox,” it mixes a “gangster” yarn with a concept of a shrinking universe (in the future). Instead of awesomely powerful, prodigious aliens with infinite abilities, the “invasion” story offers confused “bunny” aliens and more misdirection than the old “wishbone” offense at Nebraska. Instead of the purely logical robot who solves riddles with flawless computing and inhuman dedication, the problems in another story are compounded by the self-indulgent narcissism of the robot. Rather than having the protagonist solve problems little by little and Kuttner guiding the readers through step-by-step in the inventor’s version of a police procedural, Gallegher has already solved the problem in a drunken state (called Gallegher Plus because the neurons fire smoother and faster when he’s intoxicated) and much of the story hinges on trying to determine what he’s done and why.

Sadly, in today’s era of multi-volume story lines of “novels as tomes,” short story writers like Kuttner and Avram Davidson don’t garner much attention. Thankfully, there are a few stalwarts around like Mona and Watters to bring them to our attention.
(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Aug 10, 2012 Riju Ganguly rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After reading a couple of ‘Gallegher’ stories in ‘The Last Mimzy’, I had felt sufficiently intrigued to try other stories written by Henry Kuttner which involved this semantically-challenged, alcoholic and mercenary scientist who is a remarkable inventor ONLY when he is completely drunk (and obviously, he remembers nothing about those inventions once the alcohol wears off). Thanks to Planet Stories (who has already done great service to the sci-fi community by giving us some of the lost jewels w...more After reading a couple of ‘Gallegher’ stories in ‘The Last Mimzy’, I had felt sufficiently intrigued to try other stories written by Henry Kuttner which involved this semantically-challenged, alcoholic and mercenary scientist who is a remarkable inventor ONLY when he is completely drunk (and obviously, he remembers nothing about those inventions once the alcohol wears off). Thanks to Planet Stories (who has already done great service to the sci-fi community by giving us some of the lost jewels written by C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett and others) now all the 5 stories are available in this slim volume. Its contents are: -

• ….But They Do Have Tales: a brilliant, witty, and yet razor-sharp introduction to the stories as well as the times during which they had been written, by another great author, F. Paul Wilson.
• Introduction: a touching and refreshing piece from C.L. Moore, who was an author of greater stature than her husband, whose book is under review. [This piece has been taken from the 1952 edition of the book.]
1. Time Locker: In a drunken fit Gallegher invents a locker, but what happens when things are placed inside it?
2. The World is Mine: Gallegher and his Grandpa outdo each-other in drunkenness, and several mind-bending inventions come in vogue which involve Martians from the future, sinister & ambitious policemen, corpses found at Gallagher’s backyard (which keep on disappearing from morgue) etc. etc.
3. The Proud Robot: Vexed by several pressing issues simultaneously Gallegher goes on a binge and unleashes the narcissistic, philosophically bent and smug robot Joe onto the world, and suffers/enjoys the consequences.
4. Gallegher Plus: Once again Gallgher does it, i.e. solves several problems simultaneously while being royally intoxicated, and then spends his sober state trying to run away from authorities (several), thugs, clients, and also getting into troubles related to Joe and drinks.
5. Ex Machina: Framed for murder, Gallagher suddenly finds himself stalked by something that consumes drinks meant for him before he can understand anything, and the law gets in a knot trying to decide Joe’s spiritual bent.

I am sure that despite all those miniscule descriptions I have been a total failure in capturing the madcap stuff that Kuttner had served in these tales. Of course, they have limitations. Of course, when read in a single sitting they appear repetitive, and yet, they are blessedly free from all the character-development stuff that has infected present sci-fi, and allows the reader to enjoy a few laughs. Recommended, obviously.(less)

like · see review

Aug 25, 2010 Andy added it · review of another edition

Shelves: x_from_andylib, genre_science_fiction, yop1952, yed1983

EX-LIB. 1ST BRITISH EDITION. 1ST PUBLISHED AS 'ROBOTS HAVE NO TAILS' IN USA BY LEWIS PADGETT (HENRY KUTTNER & C.L. MOORE) IN 1952.

1 like · like · see review

Mar 29, 2010 Jeff rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Henry Kuttner was one of the masters of science fiction from the 1930s to the 1950s, when he died, way too young, of a heart attack.

This book collects his stories of Galloway Gallegher, who is an absolutely brilliant inventor -- but only when he is drunk. When he is sober, he has no memory of what he invented and must figure it out before it lands him in trouble. These stories are, of course, played for laughs. A very amusing collection.

1 like · like · see review

Oct 04, 2009 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi

This is a fun collection of short stories by a forgotten master of science fiction from the pulp era. It is 5 longish short stories about a scientist who could only be a genius when he is drunk, and when sober cannot remember how he invented things. The stories revolve around the discover of his drunken-self's inventions. They are very much in the style of screwball comedy.

1 like · like · see review

Mar 23, 2009 Nikki rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

A great and (until now) hard to find book. Its a very comedic sci -fi of 5 short stories about a scientist who is ONLY a genius when he's drunk.

The edition I have is not as nice as the pictured one above - its a very garish pinkish cover with a robot on it, and the only two copies of it I have ever seen fall apart the minute you try to read it, which is the ONLY complaint i have with this book.

I'm extremely ecstatic to know that this book has finally been republished as I will need to get a cop...more

1 like · like · see review

Jun 14, 2013 Shannon Appelcline rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Though most of the stories are good, they're not served by being collected, which highlights their formulae and the repetitiveness.

like · see review

Sep 09, 2012 Doug rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A quick read with a unique concept. Love each of the four short stories and their combo of sci-fi, mystery, humor, and oddity.

like · see review

Feb 05, 2012 Aaron rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fun, inventive, and extraordinarily well written.

like · see review

Dec 08, 2011 Dvdlynch rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: anthology-1-author, anthology-theme, humor, science-fiction

Smart and witty sci-fi stories from a neglected master of the genre. If you've never read Henry Kuttner before this is an excellent place to start.

like · see review

May 09, 2011 Zechariah Balasingam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: all-time-favourites, we-own-it

Before his Time an all time legend of an author!

like · see review

Jun 17, 2013 Jim marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Jun 16, 2013 Nathan marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Jun 14, 2013 Marlen Boyen marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Jun 13, 2013 L.r rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Jun 08, 2013 Jay Bolling marked it as to-read · review of another edition

May 27, 2013 April Michael marked it as to-read · review of another edition

May 26, 2013 Voi Sosnowski marked it as to-read · review of another edition

May 23, 2013 Patrick W marked it as to-read · review of another edition

May 07, 2013 Darrelljones marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: kathy-darrell-s-books

Apr 25, 2013 Lance Springer added it · review of another edition

Apr 11, 2013 Martyna rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Apr 05, 2013 serrulatae (girl a) marked it as maybe · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, z_maybe_sff, seduced-by-the-title

Apr 04, 2013 J.c. Drost marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Apr 04, 2013 Matthew Fishgold rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Mar 30, 2013 Thomas Stone added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1

Mar 29, 2013 Bosa Mora marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Mar 27, 2013 Peter Gergely marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: owned-books

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (5)

More editions...

Genres

Science Fiction

23 users

Short Stories

6 users

Humor

5 users

Science Fiction Fantasy

2 users

See top shelves...

About Henry Kuttner

Henry Kuttner was, alone and in collaboration with his wife, the great science fiction and fantasy writer C. L. Moore, one of the four or five most important writers of the 1940s, the writer whose work went furthest in its sociological and psychological insight to making science fiction a human as well as technological literature. He was an important influence upon every contemporary and every sci...more

More about Henry Kuttner...

Books by Henry Kuttner

The Book of Iod: Ten Tales of the Mythos

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About The Proud Robot

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

title link	preview: Robots Have No Tails
avg rating	preview: Robots Have No Tails Goodreads rating: 4.09 (109 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9708369-robots-have-no-tails?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1289865517l/9708369.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9708369-robots-have-no-tails?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Robots Have No Tails by Henry Kuttner[/url]

Robots Have No Tails

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

combineOther Editions (5)

Genres

About Henry Kuttner

Books by Henry Kuttner

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About The Proud Robot

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (5)