True Love

Science fiction has always been about humanity’s quest to understand itself. By creating ever-more-advanced technology, humans take on the roles of both creator and creation, remaking themselves until, pushed into perfectionism, they fail. Ancient Greek myths reflect this pattern: Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down each time, Icarus’s wings melting when he flies too close to the sun, and Prometheus stealing fire and being punished by the gods with eternal torment. Twentieth-century science fiction draws on these myths in its consideration of the risks associated with humanity’s use of technology to grasp at powers traditionally reserved for the divine, and the punishment for hubris often takes the form of retribution, justice, or simple irony.

In the mid-20th century, the most commercially successful and critically lauded science fiction writers—including the so-called “Big Three” consisting of Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke—were men, and their work often centered male protagonists while relegating women to roles as love interests, sidekicks, or plot devices. This aligns with the common 20th-century notion that technology is male centric and that the role of creator is inherently masculine. These assumptions are evident in “True Love,” where the imagined “ideal woman” functions as a MacGuffin—an object of pursuit that bears little specific relevance except to motivate the actions of the major characters. Even when Joe finds, or believes that he has found, the ideal woman in Charity Jones, she does not appear on the page, remaining an object of fantasy rather than a fully developed character. As a plot function, she fulfills her role simply by being found—by existing as the “ideal.” It is Joe who now seeks to become whole and understand himself without either Milton (his creator) or Charity (his new caretaker). Seeing Charity as a preferable alternative to Milton, Joe says that he will teach her and that he will tell her that she is his true love. By breaking free of Milton—a parent figure—and replacing him with a romantic partner, Joe enacts the archetypal process of coming of age, and now he is the one seeking to understand his place in the world, demonstrating the relationship between Rebellion and the Formation of Identity.

In “True Love,” gender is used to move the plot forward. Milton, the computer scientist who creates Joe, is defined in his own mind by his failed masculinity. He acknowledges to Joe that his inexperience with women has led him to create Joe and task him with finding the perfect partner. Despite his success as a creator of new technologies, Milton has not achieved what he sees as the core objective of masculine life—to find heteronormative love with an “ideal” woman. Instead, he must delegate this task to the robot man, the masculine stand-in. Having not gotten married by “nearly forty,” Milton’s desire for a partner moves the plot toward the eventual ending where he sacrifices his life and liberty to his creation.

Milton’s failure to see women as people leads to his failure to recognize The Unquantifiable Nature of Love. He acknowledges to Joe that love is “an abstract,” but he deludes himself into believing that he can conjure it into being by sorting women according to concrete statistics: height, IQ, hair color, adherence to conventional beauty standards as measured by physical resemblance to past pageant winners, and so on. This prioritization of quantitative standards dooms his project before it starts: He cannot fall in love with a list of measurable qualities, and his obsession with measurement prevents him from recognizing any of the women he meets as a unique individual. This irony is shown in the fact that the 200-odd women in “True Love” are nameless, except for the one Joe chooses for himself. The meaning of her name, Charity, refers to an act of service done selflessly for the benefit of someone else. As a literary device, this name makes the point that she is not seen as an individual but as a function of womanhood. Joe’s closing fantasy of their relationship makes this clear: “I will teach her how to operate me and how to care for me” (Paragraph 40). She is only there to serve Joe like Joe had previously served Milton.

In “True Love,” the characters do not often tell the truth or find love, and this ironic ending is foreshadowed by the character arc of Joe, who moves from agreeable sidekick to antagonist, betraying his creator to take his place. Many science fiction stories involve creations threatening or taking over their creators forcefully, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or modern interpretations like Alex Garland’s film Ex Machina and the Hulu series Devs.

Asimov’s experiences as a scientist and in World War II shaped his writing in a way that was not only speculative but also genre changing. Science fiction of the 19th century, like that of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Mary Shelley, was focused on humanity’s push into the unknowns of travel and medical science, exploring the ramifications of that hubris. Asimov’s science fiction, while also touching on these 19th-century themes, was based on his very real experience with secret, experimental programs and his deeply scientific mind. His writing, especially short stories like “True Love,” reflect the 20th century’s technological explosion and the question of man’s place in it. On the forefront, Asimov was in the right place to not only witness this explosion but also add to and understand it on a human level. He explored humanity’s overreach by juxtaposing these familiar themes with real, cutting-edge science.

Like many science fiction writers, Asimov accurately predicted future developments. Like Milton, 21st-century people use AI and algorithms to find romantic relationships. Milton’s story functions as a cautionary tale about the dangers of attempting to quantify the unquantifiable and about The Futility of the Search for Perfection. Joe grants Milton a power impossible without the help of a computer: the power to quickly sort through thousands of potential partners in search of the perfect one. This is analogous to the function of modern dating apps, in which users quickly swipe through hundreds of profiles, assessing a photograph and a few data points before moving on to the next candidate. “True Love” suggests that this abundance of choice is in itself dangerous: The belief that a “perfect” partner is out there somewhere leads Milton to reject every real woman he meets.