Wow, I loved this story. It felt so lively and engaging compared to Graveyard Heart, which I found turgid and uninteresting. Zelazny raised so many interesting philosphical questions about humanity and personhood here, all revolving around the central issue of what it means to be human I suppose, but there's so much within that. Like Glenn, I definitely saw more parallels with Job than with Faust, but even then, it seemed like just a jumping off point really. Which is good, because I'm not sure how worthwhile a straight retelling of either story but with robots would be. While there is an element of temptation in the relationship between Frost and Mordel, the story isn't about that (or suffering, or the nature of good and evil). Instead, it's about discovering purpose beyond simply following instructions, which again, is part of the nature of humanity. By attempting to become human, Frost is actually giving the robots/computers a reason to rebuild (they're rebuilding it for humanity after all). There's another element to this, though. On several occasions, the matter of implicit vs explicit instructions is raised. SOLCOM (because it is a logical machine), assumes Frost will follow implicit instructions based on the other explicit instructions he has been given. Frost instead (because he is 'flawed') uses the gaps in the implicit instructions to go beyond his programming. Frost is already capable of a more human-like way of thinking before he becomes human. But then again, both SOLCOM and DIVCOM attempt to use a gap in their explicit instructions to each justify its own being in charge of the rebuilding. So there's ambiguity as to the line between human and computer, and even a hypocrisy in the way SOLCOM treats Frost. Zelazny's use of the appreciation of art/nature as a measure of true humanity is also interesting. Following the logic of the story, I'm not sure Frost would be able to appreciate these things even once he's in a human body. He gains the senses, but still has no frame of reference for appreciation. He may acquire that over time, and of course his descendants would be another matter. Personally, I understood SOLCOM and DIVCOM to have been created by the same agency at the same time, with the latter simply being a back-up of the former. For me, their disagreement is a sublime farce that culminates in their both being overruled by Frost, and I don't think there's any need for different powers (national or sub-national) to have been involved. It does make me wonder whether other nations' rebuilding computers are out there somewhere though... Also, for what it's worth, I didn't read the Beta machine as explicitly female (until the very end), but it is an easy understanding to reach based on Frost being explicitly male and the Beta machine being his counterpart. I did feel like Zelazny's attitudes to gender were a weakness of the story, but that's purely a twenty-first-century judgement of a story written in the 1950s. Finally, I thought this story worked fine as a stand-alone novella. I think a full novel would detract a bit from the snappy way it's written. What I would love to see, though, is more of these short story parables from the same world.