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Larry Belmont worked for a company that made robots. Recently it had begun experimenting with a household robot. It was going to _____________( 尝试) by Larry's wife, Claire.

Claire didn't want the robot in her house, especially as her husband would ________(离家) for three weeks, but Larry persuaded her that the robot wouldn't harm her or allow her to be harmed. It would be a bonus. However, when she first saw the robot, she felt ________（alarm）. His name was Tony and he seemed more like a human______a machine. He was tall and handsome with smooth hair and a deep voice although his facial expression never changed.

______ the second morning Tony, wearing an apron, brought her breakfast and then asked her whether she needed help dressing. She felt ________(embarrass)and quickly told him to go. It was disturbing and frightening that he looked so human.

One day, Claire mentioned that she didn't think she was clever. Tony said that she must feel very unhappy to say that. Claire thought it was __________(荒谬的) to be offered sympathy by a robot. But she began to trust him. She told him how she was overweight and this made her feel unhappy. Also she felt her home wasn't elegant enough for someone like Larry who wanted to improve his social position. She wasn't like Gladys Claffern, one of the richest and most powerful women around.

As a favour Tony promised to help Claire make herself smarter and her home _______elegant. So Claire borrowed __________(一堆) books from the library for him to read, ___________(更确切地说), scan. She looked at his fingers with wonder as they turned each page and suddenly reached for his hand. She was amazed by his fingernails and the softness and _________(warm)of his skin. How absurd, she thought. He was just a machine.

Tony gave Claire a new haircut and changed the makeup she wore. As he was not allowed to accompany her to the shops, he wrote out a list of items for her. Claire went into the city and bought curtains, cushions, a carpet and bedding. Then she went into a jewellery shop to buy a necklace. When the clerk at the counter was rude to her, she _______ Tony ______(打电话给…)and told the clerk to speak to him. The clerk immediately changed his attitude. Claire thanked Tony, telling him that he was a \As she turned around, there ________(stand) Gladys Claffern. How awful to be discovered by her, Claire thought. By the amused and surprised look on her face, Claire knew that Gladys thought she was _______________(有风流韵事). After all, she knew Claire's husband's name was Larry, not Tony.

When Claire got home, she wept ________ anger in her armchair. Gladys was everything Claire wanted to be. \her friends to the house the night before he was _______(leave) and Larry was to return. By that time, Tony expected the house to be completely transformed.

Tony worked _______(steady) on the improvements. Claire tried to help once but was too clumsy. She __________(从…摔下来) a ladder and even though Tony was in the next room, he managed to catch her ________(及时). He held her firmly in his arms and she felt the warmth of his body. She screamed, _______ (push) him away and ran to her room for the rest of the day.

The night of the party arrived. The clock struck eight. The guests would be arriving soon and Claire told Tony to go into another room. At that moment, Tony ____________(弯曲胳膊)

around her, bending his face close to hers. She cried out \didn't want to leave her the next day and that he felt more than just the desire _______( please) her. Then the front door bell rang. Tony freed her and disappeared from sight. _______ was then that Claire realized that Tony had opened the curtains of the front window. Her guests had seen everything !

The women were impressed by Claire, the house and the delicious cuisine. Just before they left, Claire heard Gladys _________(whisper) to another woman that she had never seen anyone so handsome as Tony. What a sweet victory to be envied by those women! She might not be as beautiful as them, but_______ of them had such a handsome lover.

Then she remembered -Tony was just a machine. She shouted \让…一个人呆着) and ran to her bed. She cried all night. The next morning a car drove up and took Tony away.

The company was very ________(please)with Tony's report on his three weeks with Claire. Tony had protected a human being from harm. He had prevented Claire from harming _______ through her own sense of failure. He had opened the curtains that night so that the other women would see him and Claire, knowing that there was no risk to Claire's _________(marry). But even though Tony had been so clever, he would have to be rebuilt -you cannot have women failing in love with machines.

Using language:

Isaac Asimov was an American scientist ______ writer who wrote around 480 books that included mystery stories, science and history books, and even books about the Holy Bible and Shakespeare. But he is ______(well) known for his science fiction stories. Asimov had both an extraordinary __________(imagine) that gave him the ability ________（explore）future worlds and an amazing mind with which he searched for explanations of everything, in the present and the past.

Asimov's life began in Russia, _______ he was born on 2 January, 1920. It ended in New York on 6 April, 1992, when he died as a result of an HIV infection that he had got from a blood transfusion nine years earlier.

When Asimov was three, he moved with his parents and his one-year-old sister to New York City. There his parents bought a candy store which they ran for the next 40 or so years. At the age of nine, when his mother __________(怀孕) her third child, Asimov started working part-time in the store. He _________（帮助）through his school and university years until 1942, a year after he had gained a master's degree in chemistry. In 1942 he joined the staff of the Philadelphia Navy Yard as a junior chemist and worked there for three years. In 1948 he got his PhD in chemistry. The next year he became a biochemistry teacher at Boston University School of Medicine. In 1958 he gave up teaching ___________(become)a full-time writer.

It was when Asimov was eleven years old that his talent _______ writing became obvious. He had told a friend two chapters of a story he had written. The friend thought he was retelling a story from a book. This really surprised Asimov and from that moment, he started to_____ himself ________(认真对待…) as a writer. Asimov began having stories published in science fiction magazines in 1939. In 1950 he published his first novel and in 1953 his first science book.

Throughout his life, Asimov received many awards, both for his science fiction books and his

science books. Among his most famous works of science fiction, one for which he won an award was the Foundation trilogy (1951-1953), three novels about the death and rebirth of a great empire in a galaxy of the future. It was loosely based on the fall of the Roman Empire but was about the future. These books are famous because Asimov invented a theoretical framework which was designed to show ______ ideas and thinking may develop in the future. He is also well known for his collection of short stories, I, Robot (1950), in which he developed _________(一套) three \allow them to be injured. Some of his ideas about robots later influenced other writers and even scientists researching into artificial intelligence.

Asimov was married twice. He married his first wife in 1942 and had a son and a daughter. Their marriage lasted 31 years. Soon after his divorce in 1973, Asimov married again but he had no children with his second wife.