Project Gutenberg 2009-09-13 Public domain in the USA. 217 Burton, Russell Beecham, Tom 1926 2000 Beecham, Thomas A. Weak on Square Roots Produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction July 1953. Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net "Weak on Square Roots" by Russell Burton is a science fiction short story published in the early 1950s. The narrative revolves around the creation of a robot named Pascal by Ronald Lovegear, who struggles to balance his obsession with technology and his marital relationship. The story explores themes of artificial intelligence, human emotions, and the potential complexities that arise when machines take on roles traditionally held by people. The plot follows Ronald as he brings home Pascal, a cutting-edge computer intended to become a mechanical servant. As Ronald immerses himself in perfecting Pascal's functionality, his wife, Corinne, becomes increasingly drawn to the robot, experiencing a conflicting mix of affection and disdain towards both Pascal and Ronald. The story culminates in a poignant moment when Ronald discovers a moment of intimacy between Corinne and Pascal, leading him to a painful realization about his wife’s emotional connection to the robot. Ultimately, he decides to rid their lives of Pascal, throwing away the pumpkin-headed creation that had inadvertently transformed their lives in ways he had not anticipated. (This is an automatically generated summary.) Reading ease score: 75.7 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read. en Science fiction Short stories Robots -- Fiction PS Text Science Fiction Browsing: Literature Browsing: Science-Fiction & Fantasy Browsing: Fiction Category: Short Stories Category: Science-Fiction & Fantasy 43581 2025-06-12T11:09:27.296053 text/html 39373 2021-01-05T13:41:25 text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 216190 2021-01-05T13:41:25 text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 application/zip 293091 2025-06-12T11:09:33.994029 application/epub+zip 291426 2025-06-12T11:09:30.608030 application/epub+zip 71791 2025-06-12T11:09:29.268009 application/epub+zip 444703 2025-06-12T11:09:35.985970 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 436641 2025-06-12T11:09:33.098010 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 167464 2022-09-14T03:50:52.597958 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 36576 2025-06-12T11:09:26.926067 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 36455 2021-01-05T13:41:25 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 14153 2021-01-05T13:41:25 text/plain; charset=us-ascii application/zip 19354 2025-06-12T11:09:36.141986 application/rdf+xml 15074 2025-06-12T11:09:29.861042 image/jpeg 3851 2025-06-12T11:09:29.563062 image/jpeg 292267 2025-06-12T11:09:27.328054 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog