robot – Page 6 – Made by Mikal

Naked Sun

Post author:mikal
Post published:May 18, 2008
Post category:Book

Bill Clarke was kind enough to lend me a compendium of Asimov that contained the next book in the series I'm reading at the moment. I've had to skip over some of the earlier collections of robot short stories, because they're quite hard to find. Specifically, I haven't been able to find anyone with a copy of The Complete Robot for sale, even new. This book is the next in the Robot series, and the second which features Detective Baley. Again Baley is solving a murder, although this time its occurred on a Spacer world instead of his own Earth. Along the way he has to confront his own fear of open spaces, as well as other's fear of proximity to other humans. This was again another excellent book. I enjoyed it a lot. [isbn: 0553293397]

Caves of Steel

Post author:mikal
Post published:May 14, 2008
Post category:Book

Caves of Steel is interesting because it is a murder mystery set in the future, which at the time this book was written was a novel concept. It also presents an interesting almost-communist view of the future, where individual liberties are surrendered one by one in order to improve economic efficiency in order to support Earth's ever growing population. Implicit in that is the assertion that capitalism is inherently inefficient, but I'll leave that discussion alone. This book is a really quick read. It took me a day (including actually going to work) to knock it over, which was fun. The book is a good, light read. [isbn: 0553293400] [award: nominee hugo 1954]

I, Robot

Post author:mikal
Post published:May 12, 2008
Post category:Book

The 1950s must have been a great time to be a science fiction author. WW2 was finally over, and seemingly massively stupid ideas like mutually assured destruction, nuclear rifles so powerful that they were as much a danger to those firing them as those who were on the receiving end, and Brylcreem were all the rage. Into this atmosphere of run away idiocy comes Asimov's I, Robot, the book which defined the three laws of robotics, and some how managed to not suggest that humanity should nuke each other all into submission. This book is still an excellent read almost 60 years later, and I think still shows us some of the future. Its a little depressing to think how little we've achieved towards Asimov's proposed future world, given the time line laid out in this book. One of the interesting aspects of this book is Asimov's failure to predict things which seem so mundane now, but must have not been obvious to an observer in 1950. For example: The commonness of computers now. One of the short stories revolves around a secret batch of robots, and the need to debug them. The protagonists can't use a computer though, because…