Isaac Asimov

The Caves of Steel

Goodness

Elijah Baley Series

Janice Hopper

I last read this book in high school (graduated 1970, so yeah, a long, long time ago.) I read a CRAPTON of Asimov back then. (Though I had his name wrong for years, thinking it was Asminov. I finally figured out the right way to say it.)

CSB:
I was such a big fan that I actually wrote him a fan letter, one of MAYBE 3 fan letters I've written my whole life. He sent me back a postcard saying he was happy I was enjoying his work, and hoped I'd continue to enjoy it in the future. And signed it. Needless to say, I was thrilled. And, of course, I lost it over the course of the years. But I still remember standing in my dad's tv repair shop and reading that card.
/csb

Anyway, this book. Times change, tastes change. I thought it was a pretty competent story, though the author had to wind it up pretty quickly in the end. A Spacer has been murdered. Whodunit???

We get a picture of a society of people dependent on yeast-based protein for food, nuclear power for energy (one pound of fissionable material used per day). Lives are tightly constrained. While there are space colonies, they're closed to the Average Joe on earth. This leads to lots of resentment of the Spacers and their robot minions. 

And now a spacer has been murdered. Plainclothes policeman Elijah "Lije" Baley (my brain does NOT want to spell the last name that way) gets called in to be the detective assigned to the case, with one complication. He's assigned a robot partner from the Spacer enclave on earth. The partner, R. (for "Robot") Daneel Olivaw. Olivaw is almost completely indistinguishable from a human. He has mechanical/computer traits like remembering faces previously seen in a crowd of people, etc. But he does the old "what is curiosity?" "what do you mean by beauty/ethics/religion/etc?" He knows what justice is, by some lights anyway, because he's had a justice upgrade added, LOL. He's also extremely fair and unbiased and literal. He's generally a sympathetic robot.

I was pretty sure I knew the killer early on. Asimov plays fair with us, though, dropping hints but not giving away too much. And many times, the point of a mystery (at least for me) is NOT figuring out whodunit. It's all in the way you get to that spot.

All that said, I really wasn't looking forward to reading this book, and I didn't really enjoy it. It's not the outdated depictions of future technology. It's just too fecking simple a tale for the person I am these days. I just wasn't really interested.

Part of the problem (as I've said before) with reading genre for >50 years is that you keep seeing some of the same stories bouncing back and forth through time. Ok, that doesn't make sense, but here's what I mean: I see Daneel Olivaw being a calm and competent law officer and I think of Captain Carrot from Pratchett's Night Watch books. When he says "...we were never under any delusions as to which was more important, an individual or humanity" I hear "the needs of the many" vs. "the needs of the few, or the one." Sympathetic robot stories are not uncommon anymore. From Bradbury's Electric Grandmother to Eando Binder's Adam Link to the Iron Giant and Marvin the Paranoid Android, they all owe a lot to Asimov here. So I'm not just reading a book from 1954. I'm reading a book from 1954 overlaid with all my memories of all these other characters. And often the original fades in comparison to the newer ones. That's a piss-poor explanation, but there we are. Moreover, in 2019, it's really, really hard to forget what a society like the one depicted would be doing to the earth. 

BTW, what WAS it with the idea of moving slidewalks??? Did anyone REALLY think that was a good idea??? Heinlein thought of it too. Jeezopete. 

Anyway, props to anyone who's read this and WASN'T mobbed by 50,000 or whatever other books and ideas. Hope y'all liked it better than I did on this re-read.

Kirsten Simkiss

This was my first time ever reading an Asimov book, one of the best known names regarding robots in science fiction literature. I was optimistic. However, I found the book and the characters to be rather simple in general. I'd probably give this book 3 stars at best. I didn't find it particularly compelling.

The story follows the two main characters, Lije and Daneel. (Lije is perhaps the strangest nickname I have ever seen. I would never have suspected that it was short for Elijah if I hadn't been told. I had been pronouncing it Lee-jay.) Neither character is particularly interesting. Lije is a police officer, but seems to overreact and jump erratically at conclusions that, with a little actual evidence, would have made this book much shorter - and it's already pretty short as is. Daneel, for being an advanced humanoid robot still manages to be about as boring as all the other mentioned robots, functioning more as a yes-no machine for the whole book. His purpose seems simply to discredit Lije's hairball theories. Realistically, Daneel seems to create more problems than he solves. None of the characters were particularly deep and the murder mystery that the story is centered around gets lost in the future Earth politics. Hell, the video footage of the murder isn't even watched by the leading detective until the final chapters of the book. You would think that might have come up sooner, but no.

All those negatives aside, Asimov really defined robot literature and the future society he created has heavily influenced countless of other science fiction writers for years and years to come. The world he came up with was that solid. I've seen countless movies and read dozens of stories that very clearly took a leaf out of Asimov's interpretation of the robotic future and how society might have changed going forward.

Ultimately, if you're a fan of robot literature, this one is worth reading to see how Asimov influence the science fiction we know and love today. However, this isn't one I will be likely to reread in the future.

Adam

This 2nd book in Asimovs robot series after I, Robot. It is more a detective novel than a serious sci-fi story, but it does set the stage for the world.

Sarah Escorsa

I can't say I'm a big fan of science-fiction books that involve robots (and/or distant planets for that matter) but my sister is an Asimov fan and recently read Caves of Steel for the second time so I thought I'd give it a try.

I can't say I disliked the book, it's well-written and fairly interesting, but I had a really hard time getting into it. It was an alright read but nothing exciting. I had thought about reading more of the Robots series if I enjoyed Caves of Steel but I think I'll leave it at that. Robots really don't seem to be my thing!

Michael Hessling

Emre Yarar

Andru Matthews

A millennium into the future two advancements have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. Isaac Asimov’s Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together. Like most people left behind on an over-populated Earth, New York City police detective Elijah Baley had little love for either the arrogant Spacers or their robotic companions. But when a prominent Spacer is murdered under mysterious circumstances, Baley is ordered to the Outer Worlds to help track down the killer. The relationship between Life and his Spacer superiors, who distrusted all Earthmen, was strained from the start. Then he learned that they had assigned him a partner: R. Daneel Olivaw. Worst of all was that the “R” stood for robot—and his positronic partner was made in the image and likeness of the murder victim!

Jatan Mehta

A Lije Baley & R. Daneel Olivaw Novel

Kieran Mansfield

Noisy Deadlines

Didi Chanoch

The first of Asimov's robot novels, chronicling the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together. Detective Elijah Baley invesitgates the murder of an offworlder in Spacetown. In the opinion of the Spacers, the murder is tied up with recent attempts to sabotage the Spacer-sponsored project of converting Earth to an integrated human/robot society on the model of the Outer Worlds. To search for the killer in the City's vast caves of steel, Elijah is assigned a Spacer partner named R. Daneel. That's Robot Daneel. And notwithstanding the celebrated Three Laws of Robotics, which should make such a murder impossible, R. Daneel is soon Elijah's prime suspect.

The Caves of Steel

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