[a_shovel]

The paragraph about the stove making dozens of breakfasts as the house collapses at the climax of the story is what always stuck with me most. It would take a better writer than me to say why it works so well, I just know it does.

[greenbit]

What do you do with an impossible situation? You do what you can. This maniacal robot stove somehow evokes a sense of desperation we can instinctively empathize with. A fiction of an intelligent machine, facing doom, deserving of pity. Or at least I like that idea better than just some mundane physical explanation.

[munificent]

> It would take a better writer than me to say why it works so well, I just know it does.

One way to look at fiction is that it's a way to express an idea indirectly that defies explanation in literal non-fiction terms.

There are non-verbal thoughts and feelings we can all understand, but can't seem to put them into words in order to transmit from one brain to another without having to go indirectly through a metaphor or allegory.