Tideline (Short Story): A Robot as the Ultimate Team Player (Video Review)

Recommendation: Read this, and when you finish wiping the tears from your eyes, go read about human-robot teams

Elizabeth Bear deservedly won a 2008 Hugo for best short story for Tideline, about a loyal Marine Corps robot named Chalcedony, the last survivor of her squad. But the story isn’t a story of weaponization and tactics, like a Bolos novel. Instead it is a bittersweet story of loyalty, art, aging, managing multiple conflicting goals, mentoring, protecting, and all the other ways a robot can be a team player.