{"id":3142,"date":"2022-03-14T10:30:23","date_gmt":"2022-03-14T10:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=3142"},"modified":"2022-03-19T11:36:33","modified_gmt":"2022-03-19T11:36:33","slug":"steele-wyoming-by-ron-goulart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=3142","title":{"rendered":"Steele Wyoming by Ron Goulart"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Steele Wyoming<\/em><\/strong> by Ron Goulart (F&SF<\/em>, March 1980) opens with a group of \u201cOutside\u201d down-and-outs roasting a dog for dinner (\u201cTastes pretty good\u201d . . . \u201cIt\u2019s the wild oregano gives it zing\u201d). One the group, Otto, claims he invented Steele Wyoming, a revolutionary guardbot, and proceeds to tell his tale of riches to rags.
This account begins with him rescuing a female friend, Bev, the owner of a pest extermination company called Zapbug (a running joke is that her sonic repellents cause Otto continual problems) from a group of Poverty Commandos and Suicide Cadets who are attacking her mansion. When Otto later tries to convince her to give up her career for him, she says he\u2019ll need to amass greater riches first.
This subsequently leads Otto to create Steele Wyoming, which he then demonstrates to Carlos, a contact at NRA (National Robot & Android):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carlos chuckled. \u201cHe\u2019s very impressive, amigo.\u201d
\u201cDesigned to scare the crap out of any looter, rapist, housebreaker or other unwanted Outsider.\u201d
\u201cSteele Wyoming, huh? Catchy.\u201d
\u201cA cowboy name.\u201d I\u2019d gotten butsub on my fingers somehow. Wiping them on the plyocloth, I tossed it aside and one of my little servobots came scooting over to gather it up.
Carlos, slowly, circled Steele Wyoming. \u201cI assume he\u2019s lethal as well as frightening?\u201d
\u201cTell him, Steele.\u201d
\u201cFirst off, let me say howdy, Mr. Trinidad, sir,\u201d drawled the big android in his rumbling Old West voice. He reached a huge horny hand up to tip his highcrown stetson. \u201cI kin be lethal or I kin merely stun varmints. Depends on how the nice folks who owns me wants the deal to go down.\u201d
Carlos laughed, pleased. \u201cHe\u2019s terrific, amigo.\u201d
\u201cWhat I figured,\u201d I said while Carlos stood gazing up at the seven foot tall cowboy android, \u201cis that to a great many people in America, even in this year of 2020, the cowboy remains a symbol of honesty, dedication, law and order.\u201d
Steele adjusted his hat on his head.
\u201cThat is surely true.\u201d  p. 86<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The rest of the story (spoiler) sees the homicidal results of Wyoming\u2019s trigger happy attitude1<\/sup> (starting with a noisy subrock millionaire neighbour, and followed by the three policemen who see Wyoming dumping the body). Further complications result from Bev\u2019s infidelity.
Amusing stuff.
*** (Good). 4,750 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. One wonders if Wyoming\u2019s lethality was modelled on Clint Eastwood<\/a>\u2019s movies of the time (the spaghetti Westerns and Dirty Harry<\/em> series).
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steele Wyoming by Ron Goulart (F&SF, March 1980) opens with a group of \u201cOutside\u201d down-and-outs roasting a dog for dinner (\u201cTastes pretty good\u201d . . . \u201cIt\u2019s the wild oregano gives it zing\u201d). One the group, Otto, claims he invented Steele Wyoming, a revolutionary guardbot, and proceeds to tell his tale of riches to rags.This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[730,24,694,25,719,88,12],"class_list":["post-3142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ron-goulart","tag-730","tag-3-2","tag-androids","tag-fsf","tag-humour","tag-ron-goulart","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3142"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3223,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3142\/revisions\/3223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}