Roderick/Book Two

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This was originally published as Book Two of Roderick, and is also Book Two of the combined edition The Complete Roderick.

Summary

Allbright has sent Roderick to live with Hank and Indica Dinks, who mostly ignore him and leave him to learn about human behavior from TV. When the Dinks' marriage breaks up, Hank attacks Roderick, who defends himself and, thinking he has killed Hank, mails himself to the home of Ma and Pa Wood (whose address was provided by Dan Sonnenschein). These kindly eccentrics try to bring him up as their own child and send him to school, where the teachers and administrators assume he is a boy with unusual physical disabilities even though he has no human parts. During his "childhood" Roderick is kidnapped repeatedly, goes on the road with drifters and grifters, and works as a carnival fortune-teller for the shady businessman Mr. Kratt (who later coincidentally hires the former Roderick researcher Ben Franklin and the spy Mr. O'Smith). He graduates from his child-sized "toy tank" body to an adult-sized, mostly humanoid body created by the Woods (who, he learns, were Dan's foster parents). Allbright, briefly cleaned up but not any nicer, reveals that Dan is now in a mental hospital. Back in Minnetonka, the Campus Ripper is unmasked and goes on the lam. Meanwhile, Indica has become the leader of a "Machine Liberation" movement, while Hank has joined an opposing anti-machine group which storms Mr. Kratt's robot factory and attempts to lynch Roderick. The Orinoco Institute continues to look for him without success. Roderick finally hits the road alone, hoping to track down Dan.

Roderick/Book Two

Summary

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