Gizmo Origin: A Colony Mars Short Story

Colony Mars #0.5

by Gerald M. Kilby

When you’re stranded on an alien planet, all alone with no hope of being found, it’s good to be a highly skilled engineer with the ability to fashion your very own robotic friend.
Take a standard maintenance droid, hook it up the primary colony AI, imbue it with a self-learning neural-network, and feed it the complete works of Oscar Wilde as the basis for its grammatical lexicon. And voila, you have yourself a friend to stop you going insane — just so long as it doesn’t drive you crazy first.
More scrapyard than hi-tech, more steampunk than space-age, Gizmo is ready to help in anyway it can. Generally by letting you know just how smart it is and the probability of you dying within the next 24 hours.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Audiobook

37 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 10, 2020

Reviews

[Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! This short story details the origins of the droid Gizmo, the best character in the six book series.

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hi Gizmo!

Love reading how Gizmo came about! I was sad when I reached the last page and may need to re-read the books again to get my Gizmo-fix.

[Ana on the Shelves]

Lovely! The little story that everyone with a heart wanted to read!

[Angel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This little short story was included in the Kindle set that I bought. Seeing as how Gizmo was my favorite "character" in the whole series, I was thrilled when this popped up after the end of book 6. I enjoyed watching Gizmo come to life. What a fun little addition to the series!

[Rj Woodward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, short story

Thank you, Mr. Kilby for giving us that little look into the creation of gizmo. Really enjoy your writing and wish to continue with another book in your library.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great little story about Gizmo

I read Colony One first and had to jump over and read this because I got attached to Gizmo and this gave its backstory

[Zane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, emotional narration of a great short story.

[Gwen Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Gerald M. Kilby. I was so much fun to read about the beginning of Gizmo. Nills is a fantastic engineer who is holding himself together - barely - and changes a simple droid into Gizmo. As a layman, I wouldn't understand a bunch of the techno speak, so thank you for not going that route, but rather, making this into a story that I think everyone will enjoy reading. Fantastic work Gerald.

[AR bee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gizmo’s Story

A Short Story detailing the background to the creation of the AI interactive droid that served the main character and the environment of the main characters’ colony.

Interdependent, the man and the droid fix a vital component to the colony’s crop support, and in so doing find their bond of friendship.

I found it to be an engrossing little tale.

[Marney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this a lot, although having not yet read the Colony Mars series there were a lot of pieces missing from the puzzle. But I think it will be an interesting prequel to the main story, which I am really looking forward to reading.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good start

This is a great effort to provide a starting prequel to Mars Colony One. I don’t know if Mr. Kik y is personally interested in exploring more of a prequel outline, but I know that I myself and many other fans of the story would be interested.

[Susan Stirzaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun little story of how Gizmo began

Great little story to read after digesting the Colony Mars series. Lovely to find out how Gizmo began - he is the best character in the whole series after all!

[Mags Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short but Sweet!

The interchange and communication of these two throughout the series of books was excellent, but this added a whole new chapter to the relationship. I’m almost happier having read this after the fact. Very well done Author Kolby. VR, Mags

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gizmo is an important supporting character in Kilby's Colony Mars universe and you know you're smiling when you say that.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a companion read to the Mars Colony series that I started. Very short, but offered an interesting backstory to the book.

[Beverly Fuqua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gizmo is the funniest character in this series, so I had to read this origin story about him. Very cute, very enjoyable. Just wish it had been longer. There should be a whole book told from his point of view, maybe there is, there are six of them in this series.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gizmo is now one of my favourite (robot) characters.

[PresPetunia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this background story. Of course, I rate GIZMO as my favorite robot.

[Steven malberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read

I liked this short story on the origin of gizmo is well written with a exam on the idea that not all "Frankenstein monsters" are evil

[Yanick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short and sweet prequel. Now on with book 2.

[Donna Ann Sutcliffe · Rating 4 out of 5]

So glad to hear how Gizmo started out and how close Nils and Gizmo became so close on their little part of space. Very enjoyable.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Succinct story.

[Brian Asalone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gizmo!

This is short but really fun. One of my favorite characters in the mars series is thus wonderful robot. The interface with the colony one AI makes perfect sense.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great, but way too short!

Terrific story, this should be a whole series unto itself!

Gizmo is by far my favorite character from the series.

More of this story please!

[Al Sawicki]

Great, short backstory to Nils and Gizmo from Colony One.

[LaMar Eldredge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gizmo Lives

A wonderful short prequel to the Colony Mars Series. As Gizmodo is such an important character to the series having a greater understanding of his creation is useful