Isaac Asimov

Elijah Baley Series

The Caves of Steel

Goodness

Coleman McCormick

A fantastic detective story, set in Asimov's universe of robots. As with his other works (the Foundation and Empire series), a somewhat conventional story is set over a backdrop of social commentary on politics, social engineering, human culture, and more. Highly recommended for sci-fi fans.

The caves of steel

Kayla Ndife

The first Asimov book I read, this got me hooked on pretty much anything that had his name on it. The entire trilogy is more or less brilliant, following the life of a detective in Earth's future, Elijah Bailey, whose unconventional companion is a Robot made in the likeness of its creator, who is murdered in the beginning of the story.

This is a must-read for sci-fi fans, because this is how sci-fi OUGHT to be done... Asimov knows his science, but he manages to keep it in his books to a level where it is not only realistic, but also understandable.

I would suggest Asimov or sci-fi noobs to read this before trying to tackle the Foundation series.

Ryan LaFerney

Released in 1954, The Caves of Steel is the first in the Robot mystery series by Isaac Asimov. It is a detective story and illustrates an idea Asimov advocated, that science fiction can be applied to any literary genre, rather than just being a limited genre in itself. It remains one of Asimov's beloved novels. It remains a tremendously satisfying reading experience (hence my reading it twice) but there are sequences where the book shows its age a bit. But as a mid-twentieth century sci-fi classic, it endures the test of time.

The story is a nifty murder mystery set in a distant future Earth in which humanity now lives in enclosed city-sized buildings known as, of course, Cities or "caves of steel". Between the people of Earth and the Spacers, human emigrants from Earth who live among the 50 independent colonized planets (because Earth’s inability to support 8 billion humans), there exists R's (robots). They are designed and perfected among the Spacer colonies to do all the menial tasks humans do, freeing up humans for a life of leisure and pleasure. At least, that's how it works off-world. In the Cities of Earth, as robots became integrated into Earth's rigidly heirarchical society, and some of them began taking sorely needed jobs away from people, hostilities erupted into riotous frenzy. Now, robot integration is a slower process, though one that meets with no less hatred. In the story there exists a group called the Medievalists. The Medievalists are a subversive anti-robot group which pine for the 'olden days' where men did not live in the 'caves of steel' and weren't in competition with robots. He uses his position to engineer meetings with Spacer Dr. Sarton under the guise of further cooperation, but he actually intends to destroy R. Daneel - who lives with and resembles Dr. Sarton

Our main character is Elijah Baley. Elijah is a police detective whose commissioner, Julius Enderby, calls on him to solve the murder of a prominent Spacer scientists (Dr. Sarton) in a cordoned-off sector of New York called simply Spacetown. At the Spacers' insistence, Baley is partnered with a mechanical lowlife! - a robot, R. Daneel Olivaw, created by robotics engineer Dr. Sarton. And yet Olivaw is the first of a whole new breed of R's. Nearly human in appearance and demeanor, Olivaw was in fact invented by the murder victim, a Spacer scientist actually sympathetic to Earth people who hoped the new generation of human-like robots would improve the pace of Earth's technological growth and help Earth overcome its aversion to robots. The Spacers, and Olivaw, believe the scientist was murdered by an underground anti-Spacer organization which knew of these plans, and, to say the least, disapproved strongly (perhaps a member of the Medievalists?). But despite Earthfolks' hatred of Spacers, Baley knows of no organized terrorist cells dedicated to their destruction and Baley even assumes it could be a follow Robot. Yet as Baley and Olivaw pursue the case, clues mount up which point to a conspiracy that Baley doesn't want to confront that those closest to him maybe the culprit. Is the murderer his wife? His boss? 

You'll have to read to find out.

This is an excellent whodunnit and fascinating sci-fi tale, even if it has a few flaws. Here are my two main complaints: 1.) The dialogue has more of place in the 1950s rather than three millenniums from now. 2.) Baley's wife is sadly not written well and is given to melodrama. But I guess we don't read Asimov for strong female characters....

And despite these flaws, this is a classic.

More than merely an entertaining whodunnit, this novel is ultimately about humanity's need to overcome the fears and prejudices which senselessly prevent our own betterment as a species. It's a message that has remained important (just look at the current unrest in America). For this reason alone, this is a timeless novel even if it does show a bit of age.

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

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!

Henning

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 Elijah Baley Series