Plot: 2/9. It’s a tedious story without any impressive scenes. Silverberg was good at creating bland plots, meaningless context, and boring nonsense as usual.

While the narrator were waiting for the final announcement by the conclave that had been deadlocked for days, his companies differed on having a robot pope. In the end, the election result was settled and the new robot pope delivered the traditional benediction to the city and the world.

Core: 3/9. Since I know nothing about Vatican and popes, I didn’t sense this satire works for me. And I held a lot of questions while reading:

• What is difference for their believers between a human clergy and a robot one? How did the people interact with them?
• Where did robots come from? Who created them? Did they have their own death? How to differentiate them? Why did they hold the same right to compete with human and express their own opinion?
• What did the compromise of more time allotment mean?
• What kind of contribution did robots make so that no fraction detested to have robots as pope?

Character: 5/9. People discussing the matter were lively.

World and Others: 2/9. It’s a flippant world building without much food for thought.

Overall: 3/9. As usual, I didn’t think Silverberg possess much talent in writing memorable science fiction. He might be industrious but he’s not my cup of tea. I tended to reject most of his works unless they are heavily awarded.