Roderick wasn't exactly happy, but at least he was holding down a job, even if it was only as a bowl-washer at Danton's Doggie Dinette. He didn't know they were out to get him. He didn't know that in the whole wide world of lunatic game-shows, maniacal religious cults, tentacular business corporations, murderous governments, crazy consumerism and pill-popping people, there was no place for one mild-mannered robot.

Phenomenally inventive, bitingly satirical, a masterpiece of modern comic writing, Roderick at Random is the second dazzling novel by John Sladek to feature the more-and-less-than-human robot.