Sprockets Books in Order

The Sprockets books are bright, oddball science fiction adventures about robots who are much more alive than the people who built them expect. The stories have factories, space travel, inventions with silly names, and plenty of mechanical trouble. At their center is a simple question: what happens when a machine can think for itself?

Sprockets begins with a small robot accidentally given an extraordinary brain on a factory assembly line. The company wants to destroy him as a mistake, so he escapes and is taken in by Dr. Bailey and his son, Jim. Sprockets is clever, nervous, funny, and eager to understand the world around him. With the Baileys, he goes from being unwanted scrap to a member of an adventurous little team.

The first book soon grows beyond the workshop. Dr. Bailey, Jim, and Sprockets head into space, where Sprockets' unusual intelligence becomes useful in encounters that people alone could not manage. The tone is lively and playful, with a robot hero who can be literal-minded one moment and surprisingly brave the next.

In Rivets and Sprockets, the team expands when another robot joins the fun. Dr. Bailey, Jim, Rivets, and Sprockets become tangled up in an adventure involving Martians and mysterious space marbles. The book keeps the series' mix of family warmth, strange technology, and fast-moving trouble.

Bolts shifts the spotlight to a robot dog made by the same mechanical corporation. Bolts is a feisty prototype with sharp teeth, a sharp tongue, and a strong instinct to get back to the boy who is meant to be his owner. When spies mistake him for something much more valuable, his escape becomes the heart of the story.

These books are best read in publication order, beginning with Sprockets. They are shorter, lighter adventures than many of Key's later novels, but they share his affection for outsiders who deserve better than the role others have assigned them. Expect old-fashioned gadgets, broad humor, and robots with plenty of personality.