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Lost Memory
A short story by Peter Phillips
- GenresScience Fiction
13 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 1952
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 20, 2020
I first encountered this story in an anthology edited by the great Groff Conklin, Science Fiction Terror Tales. Peter Phillips's story is narrated by an AI machine, apparently on a planet occupied only by AI. It witnesses the crash of, as it thinks, another machine. The story is almost plotless, but the implications of the narration become more terrifying as it unfolds. That's all I'll say. It's the only story by Peter Phillips with which I'm familiar, but I'll read anything I can find under his name, merely on the strength of this one story.
November 3, 2020
This SF short story was first
published in the May 1952 issue
of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine.
published in the May 1952 issue
of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine.
December 2, 2025
This is one of those sly little stories that begins with robots finding something odd and ends with a surprisingly tender meditation on human fragility. The setup is simple: robots on a distant planet stumble upon a ruined human spacecraft containing unfamiliar artifacts.
What follows is a comedy of misinterpretation that slowly morphs into something strangely moving.
The robots, earnest but hilariously misguided, attempt to interpret human culture through the objects left behind. Their guesses range from plausible to wildly off-base, and Phillips uses that gap to highlight just how absurd—and absurdly precious—human habits can appear when viewed from the outside.
The robots’ hypotheses become a mirror reflecting the charming nonsense of our species.
But beneath the comedy lies melancholy. The humans who left those objects are long gone. Their stories are lost. Their everyday items—the ones we treat casually—become archaeological puzzles to beings who can never fully understand them. Phillips understands that civilization is as fragile as memory, and once memory goes, meaning evaporates.
The emotional turn arrives quietly. The robots, despite their confusion, feel a kind of wistful respect for the vanished species.
The story doesn't say it outright, but you feel it: the universe forgets us faster than we imagine. Robots trying to decode a comb or a booklet suddenly resemble future archaeologists trying to decode us.
Phillips' tone is gentle, amused, and ever so slightly mourning. It’s sci-fi with the soul of a poem, wrapped in a punchline.
It reminds you that what we leave behind—objects, stories, ephemera—is vulnerable to misreading, distortion, or disappearance.
And yet those artifacts are all that tether us to those who come after.
One of the best sci-fi stories you’ll ever read. Most recommended. Give it a go.
What follows is a comedy of misinterpretation that slowly morphs into something strangely moving.
The robots, earnest but hilariously misguided, attempt to interpret human culture through the objects left behind. Their guesses range from plausible to wildly off-base, and Phillips uses that gap to highlight just how absurd—and absurdly precious—human habits can appear when viewed from the outside.
The robots’ hypotheses become a mirror reflecting the charming nonsense of our species.
But beneath the comedy lies melancholy. The humans who left those objects are long gone. Their stories are lost. Their everyday items—the ones we treat casually—become archaeological puzzles to beings who can never fully understand them. Phillips understands that civilization is as fragile as memory, and once memory goes, meaning evaporates.
The emotional turn arrives quietly. The robots, despite their confusion, feel a kind of wistful respect for the vanished species.
The story doesn't say it outright, but you feel it: the universe forgets us faster than we imagine. Robots trying to decode a comb or a booklet suddenly resemble future archaeologists trying to decode us.
Phillips' tone is gentle, amused, and ever so slightly mourning. It’s sci-fi with the soul of a poem, wrapped in a punchline.
It reminds you that what we leave behind—objects, stories, ephemera—is vulnerable to misreading, distortion, or disappearance.
And yet those artifacts are all that tether us to those who come after.
One of the best sci-fi stories you’ll ever read. Most recommended. Give it a go.
May 11, 2023
Read:
Lost Memory - 3/5
Lost Memory - 3/5
October 8, 2025
Interesting concept. I find it pretty relevant because I can actually imagine this happening sometime in the not so distant future.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews