Something has gone very seriously wrong with Tik-Toks "asimov circuits". They should keep him on the straight and narrow, following Asimovs First Law of Robotics: "a robot shall not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm." But they dont. While maintaining the outward appearance of a mild-mannered robot, albeit one with artistic tendencies and sympathy for the robot rights movement, Tik-Toks real agenda is murderously different. He seems intent on injuring - preferably fatally - as people as possible. Almost inevitably, a successful career in crime and general mayhem leads to a move into politics and Tik-Tok becomes the first robot candidate for Vice President of the United States.All John Sladek's SF novels showed his dark humour and fascination with robots. The farce is funniest and blackest in Tik-Tok (1983), a British SF Association Award-winner.

Robot narrator Tik-Tok may have winsome ways and a cute name from Oz, but inside he's bad, bad, bad. It's not just that his "asimov circuits"--which stop robots hurting people--are defective. He enjoys killing, starting with a dear little blind girl in chapter one and reaching a body count well into four figures. With such achievements behind him, how could Tik-Tok not be offered the US Vice-Presidency?

Sladek's nightmarishly satirical future America is full of daft technology like a nuclear-powered land aircraft carrier the size of Delaware, needing 135 million tyres. Starting life on a Southern plantation where they lynch robots instead of blacks, Tik-Tok rapidly changes owners: a fast-food entrepreneur whose Szechuan duck is really armadillo, a habitual robot-smasher, a fake evangelist (Rev. Flint Orifice) who repeatedly "saves" Tik-Tok at public performances, and many more. Successful careers as robot artist and crimelord are mere steps toward the top.

It seems Tik-Tok can talk his way out of anything, even the bad publicity when his Clockman Medical Centre kicks out non-paying patients: "An interrupted appendectomy held himself together and crawled down the steps". His Wages for Robots campaign, improvised mostly for the fun of guilt-tripping human audiences, is a springboard into US politics. Then he commits one murder too many... Wonderfully, horribly inventive and funny. --David Langford