Not an actual book, just a Sci-Fi short story

Once, a loooong time ago, I read a sci-fi short story, which, little did I know at the time, sort of stuck with me.

I was "a kid" at the time, and probably a weird little kid at that. The bottom line is that I don't have the title, the author, the publisher, the name of the anthology in which it appeared, nor any of the usual identifying marks. Only the gist of the story.

I can say pretty surely that the story was written before 1959, likely way before 1959. I know that because I went "cold turkey" for sci fi around then and didn't come back even a little, for at least four or five years. I'm pretty sure I read the story considerably before the cold turkey period, but memories can be deceiving.

The hero (or should I say protagonist?) was an inventive genius BUT only when drunk. ( I can't be sure, but I get the impression somehow that there were other short stories by the same author, telling other adventures of the same "hero" in the same universe. But maybe not. )

In this story, he wakes from his drunken state to find a number of mysteries:
1. He now has a robot (robots are NOT features of the future world of the story),
The robot sasses him, won't reliably do as he's told, and informs the hero that until he (the robot) is ordered to perform the function for which he was specifically designed and at which he is expert, he will not feel himself bound to listen to any orders he doesn't find congenial.
2. Our hero does not know what the robot's purpose was, only that he himself built the robot specifically for that purpose.
3. The hero's grandfather is missing.
4. The obvious solution (get drunk again,
know the robot's purpose, order him to do it so the robot will obey instructions, then use your drunken genius to find Grandpa) is precluded because whenever the hero tries to take a drink, the liquor mysteriously disappears before it can get to his mouth.
5. Eventually the robot tells the hero that the liquor is being pre-empted by "a small brown animal".
6. Along the way, there is a court scene in which there's a legal problem as to whether the robot can serve as a witness for our hero or not.
7. In the end, it turns out that the robot's purpose is to open beer cans, but ironically, the only brand of beer which comes in cans notifies our hero that they are discontinuing that archaic practice.
8. The 'small brown animal' turns out to be Grandpa whose metabolism has been sped up by imbibing some particularly inovative concoction brewed by our hero when he was in genius mode.

Whew!

Anybody have a clue, from the plot or the general geshtalt, who that could have been or better yet, recognize the silly thing and can provide the sort of "metadata" (author, title, etc) that our younger self so foolishly ignored?

Thanks in advance

PS. I first posted this on the sci fi fans group. I hope the double posting doesnt violate some rule or other.

If so, tell me which to delete.

I'd like to say I knew this -but really it's just that my google-fu was strong today! It's The Proud Robot by Henry Kuttner - can be found in Robots Have No Tails

http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Kuttner/Robots-Have-No-Tails.html

Wow! Magic! How you did that?

That has GOT to be it. I had forgotten about the robot being transparent and being fascinated watching his (its?) own inner workings.

The part that stuck in my head forever was the bit about
the purpose of the robot being defined by the task it did superbly well (opening beer cans).

How can you "google" something when you don't have any key words? Please tell me what you did, so I can add that technique to my bag of tricks!

Oh. If I didn't say it before. Wow! Wow! Thanx loads!

Well, I just picked keywords from your message...IIRC I used "genius drunk inventor robot". If that hadn't worked I would have tried a few different combinations.

Sometimes you can find a book this way - sometimes not. It depends on whether any good reviews or plot summaries have been posted on the net.

Ah, simple when you know how! (performs "Uzbek" salute,
slapping palm of hand to forehead). D'oh!

Oh boy! Google here I come. Yee ha!

That is one of my favourite stories called "The Proud Robot" by Lewis Padgett. I have it in a collection called "Adventures in Time and space" edited by Raymond Healy and Francis McComas

Lewis Padgett is a pseudonym of Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore - although C.L. Moore states that Henry Kuttner wrote The Proud Robot alone.

Touchstone for 6: Adventures in Time and Space

Interesting! CL Moore is the upcoming posthumous guest at Diversicon. Yes, we do seances, ;) I haven't read CL Moore yet but it sounds like I should. Just the description of the story was amusing.

Kuttner and Moore were the Memorial (i.e., posthumous) guests of honor at Readercon in 2005. Someone who wrote on them in the Souvenir Book (John Clute, if memory serves) argued that Moore was the truly talented writer of the pair, and that many stories with only Kuttner's name were nonetheless collaborations. But there's very little work from before they started working together, so it may not be possible to know.

What does Diversicon do for posthumous GOH?

Interesting! Yes, very hard to know. Especially since a lot of writers critique and support each other, and sometimes it's hard to know what is "helping" and what is "collaborating."

Diversicon is in St. Paul. There are usually two posthumous GOH per year, one is usually involved in movies somehow. We have a brief "channeling" in the opening "ceremonies." It's so informal, it's hard to call it a ceremony. For the movie person, there's a panel and of course several late night movie screenings. For the writer, there is a panel or two. They don't have a reading though. I should suggest that we do a reading too. That would be especially nice for someone like CL Moore who isn't that well known.

Readings at Readercon: Ellen Brody of the Readercon committee always does a reading of something by the memorial GOH.

Anyway, I'm glad to see that Diversicon is covering Moore only, and didn't feel the need to pair her with Kuttner, since he's better remembered.