Story Behind the Story: Mayhem ex Machina

My ninth Applied Science story is now out at Big Pulp (you can find all eight previous stories here), so as usual, here’s the backstory on how it came to be.
In the prologue to Brain From Outer Space I’d had a short scene where Gwen Montgomery takes down a robot that’s about to wipe out a small black slum district. I wanted to demonstrate both that Gwen enjoys what she does and that she’s liberal for her time on race. When Big Pulp proposed the Applied Science series, expanding that vignette seemed a natural choice. It would also give me a chance to catch up on the Dani/Steve relationship in the two years since they reconnected in Blood and Steel.
As frequently happens, things changed as I went along. First, there was the whole heroic-white-person-saves-minorities thing; it worked fine for me as a single short scene, but not in a short story. Plus, I’d already touched on the racist attitudes of the era in a couple of stories and I didn’t want to overdo it. Not that it isn’t worth multiple stories but as I’ve mentioned before, I worry a lot about turning a series into a rut.
So instead of a black neighborhood, the target became LA’s Little Tokyo. And instead of a racist pig, the rogue scientist responsible was really a decent guy, doing best to develop a robot that would serve humanity rather than threaten it. Only things went a little wrong …
The next change was that I dropped Gwen from the story. I’d originally planned to show the start of her romance with FBI Science Police Agent Alan Ross, but I’d nixed the romance in the rewrite, and I just couldn’t seem to fit her into a Science Police case (the SP investigates super-science used for crime; Gwen’s agency oversees science licenses and busts researchers who try building robots, death rays etc. without getting their license first). So the heroes became Mickey Moon (previously seen in Hidden Faces) and his Nissei partner Harry Sato.
I still wanted to work Steve and Dani into the story though. I hadn’t thought about it before, but two years was a long time back then to be dating without marriage coming up. I knew Dani had turned down Steve’s proposal, so I wanted to show why, and why they were staying together despite that. I also wanted to deal with Steve’s hunt for his brother, Tommy and how it had gone since he’d moved to California to find him.
So what eventually developed was a two-track story. Track One, the battle between Harry and Mickey and the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut, Roboticus (got to say, I think that name would look good in a 1950s SF-movie marquee). Track Two, Dani and Steve figuring out their relationship … and eventually wandering right into Roboticus path.
I hope y’all like it.