<DIV>Never before published in its entirety in the United States, <i>The Complete Roderick</i> is John Sladek's masterpiece. Roderick is a robot who learns. He begins life looking like a toy tank, thinking like a child, and knowing nothing about human ways. But as he will discover, growing up and becoming fully human is no easy task in a world where many people seem to have little trouble giving up their humanity.<br><br> <i>The Complete Roderick</i> is widely considered to be the most ambitious and genius work of a novelist described by <i>The Encyclopedia of ScienceFiction</i> as "the most formally inventive, the funniest, and very nearly the most melancholy of modern US science fiction writers."</div>