"I Always Do What Teddy Says"

1965 Harrison, Harry [Max] (1925-2012). “I Always Do What Teddy Says.” Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (1965): 100-07. Rpt in The Days After Tomorrow. Ed. Hans Stefan Santesson (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1971), 145-56; in The New Improved Sun. Ed. Thomas M[ichael] Disch (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 157-66; and in Future Crime: An Anthology of the Shape of Crime to Come. Ed. Cynthia Manson and Charles Ardai (New York: Donald I. Fine, 1992), 137-45.

Teddy bear robots are used to socialize and educate small children. One is tampered with to allow the person to kill a political enemy, but he doesn't. According to Harrison, he had to change the ending to one he dislikes. The author was born Henry Maxwell Dempsey, with his father changing the surname to Harrison shortly after his birth, and he legally changed his name to Harry Max Harrison at age thirty. He was born and raised in the U. S. and lived in Mexico for a year, in Denmark for seven years, and then in the U.S., Ireland, and England for many years, and he died in England.