Good News from the Vatican

"Good News from the Vatican" is a 1971 science fiction short story by American author Robert Silverberg, featuring the election of a robot to the position of Pope of the Church of Rome.

The unnamed first person narrator is one of a group of tourists and travelers, including a Roman Catholic bishop and a rabbi, who find themselves in Rome during an unexpected Papal conclave to select a new Pope.

Paul Brians points out that the story announces its satirical intent in the first paragraph, with the names of the competing Cardinals being the Italian words for "towel" and "artichoke", respectively.

[3] Don D'Ammassa writes that it is a "quiet, understated satire" and notes the themes of the growing homogeneity and dehumanization of religion.

[4] Malcolm Edwards categorizes this story as one of a group that Silverberg published in the early 1970s that were more experimental than his longer form work and were influenced by techniques employed by contemporary literary writers like Donald Barthelme and Robert Coover.