(11-26-2023, 09:49 AM)robkelk Wrote: If you hadn't said "YA", I'd have thought it was Jack Williamson's "With Folded Hands". The phlebotinum of the story is called "rhodomagnetics", after all.
EDIT: Then again, I found the novella in my high school's library, so it might be considered to be YA...
I read that one at high school age. I found it in one of Ben Bova's collections of great pre-Nebula awards science fiction though I can't remember the title of said collection. Williamson went on to write a bunch of other stories in that setting like The Humanoid Touch. (The robots were called "humanoids.")