"Doug the robot takes a hands-on approach to learning about farm life when the family car gets stuck in a ditch on the way to visit the grandbots"--

Features the story "Steel," in which robots have replaced humans in the boxing ring, as well as more than a dozen other stories, including two that have never been collected in a book before.

When Franny Stein, self-styled mad scientist, creates a robot to show her school friends the joys of science, she ends up learning something from them instead.

Baby Brains invents RoboMom to do all the household chores and give his tired parents a rest.

"It has a dark past - one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself Murderbot. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more. Teaming up with a research transport vessal named ART (you don't want to know what the A stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue. What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks ..."--Front jacket...

Told through journal entries, twelve-year-old Danny and his best friend Slick recount how their friendship begins and when they discover Slick's true identity and ultimate fate.

Christopher is 'Proper': a real boy with a real soul, orphaned in a fire. He works for an engineer, a maker of the eccentric, loyal and totally individual mechanicals who are Christopher's best friends. But after a devastating accident, a secret is revealed and Christopher's world is changed for ever...What follows is a remarkable adventure, as Christopher discovers who he really is, and what it means to be human.

Otto does his utmost to befriend a bird.

In the summer of 1983, kids of Far Flung Falls are disappearing one by one, including Molly's brother. Aided by a crew of unusually determined pets, Molly sets off to find her brother and discover who the mastermind is behind the abductions.

"A group of robots demonstrates the difference between a want and a need, by making trades to get some things they really want and accidentally giving away some things they really need"-- "Do you know the difference between a want and a need? It can be a hard thing to understand, especially when you want something so much that you feel like you have to have it. But some things aren't essential -- like jellybean tacos and groovy boots. Other things...