Good News from the Vatican

Good News from the Vatican is a science fiction short story by American writer Robert Silverberg, first published in 1971 in Universe 1, an original anthology edited by Terry Carr. That year it won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. It has since been widely reprinted, including in The Best of Robert Silverberg (1976), where the author comments on its origins.

The story is set in Rome during an unexpected papal conclave. A group of tourists and travelers, among them a Roman Catholic bishop and a rabbi, gathers each day at an outdoor café near St Peter's Square to follow the voting. The two leading candidates, a cardinal from Milan and one from Genoa, cannot secure a majority, and an unusual solution emerges: electing a robot, which appears among the candidates. While they wait for the white smoke, the characters debate what it would mean for a machine to head the Church. The narrator and the clergymen seem hopeful, while the others openly voice their misgivings.

Critical readings vary. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction holds that the story celebrates the integration of robots into human religious culture, but other critics stress its satirical and ironic character. Paul Brians notes that the text announces its satire in the first paragraph, since the cardinals' names mean "towel" and "artichoke" in Italian. Don D'Ammassa calls it a quiet, understated satire on the growing homogeneity and dehumanization of religion. Malcolm Edwards places it among Silverberg's more experimental stories of the early 1970s, influenced by contemporary literary writers such as Donald Barthelme and Robert Coover.