Archive for the ‘Isaac Asimov’ Category
The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
published in 1952
where I got it: purchased used
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I was nineteen or twenty years old the first time I met R. Daneel Olivaw. I didn’t know what to make of him. Was he a good guy? Did he care about humans? What kind of person was he? I was maybe 24 or 25 when I made it to the end of Daneel’s life. I like that Daneel has been a part of my life all these years. I think my early 20s was the perfect age for me to get to know him.
Prior to writing The Caves of Steel in 1952, Asimov had already written a handful of robot short stories that had been published as I Robot in 1950 (Asimov reportedly protested the title of the collection, as another author had already used that title, but his publisher didn’t care. But that’s a whole ‘nother story). When unsure of how to stretch a robot story out to novel length, Asimov’s editor suggested he write a mystery novel, and make one the detectives a robot. That one conversation started everything.
The Caves of Steel takes place roughly three thousand years in the future, and humanity is a star faring race. We’ve colonized planets, tried to terraform planets, lost some colonies and built others. While the humans of space are living in the future, humans on Earth seem to be stuck in the past. People on earth mostly live in gigantic domed cities (sort of arcology-esque?), and rarely if ever leave the domes to stand under natural sunshine. Many Terrans resent the Spacers, for a variety of reasons that Asimov touches on. “Clinging to the past” seems to be a character trait for many characters in this book.
Detective Lije Bailey has just been assigned the strangest case: He’s to investigate the murder of a visiting Spacer. Stranger yet, the Spacers demand that Bailey partner up with one of their own. His new partner is R. Daneel Olivaw. The “R” stands for Robot. If Bailey is going to solve this case, the first thing he’s going to have to do is get over the revulsion he feels for Daneel. And the first thing Daneel is going to have to do is get really good at passing for a human.
Movie Review: Bicentennial Man
Posted on: November 26, 2014
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Bicentennial Man is a 1999 film directed by Chris Columbus, and stars Robin Williams, Embeth Davitz, Sam Neill, Oliver Platt and Hallie Kate Eisenberg. It’s based on the 1993 novel The Positronic Man by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg, which was an extension of Asimov’s 1976 Hugo and Nebula award winning novelette The Bicentennial Man. I’ve read a lot of Asimov (and a middling amount of Silverberg), but I haven’t read either the award winning novelette or the later written novel. So this review will be just of the movie, I can’t even speculate what scenes from the books the screenwriters skipped or expanded upon.
The story opens with an android being delivered to the Martin residence. Through the young daughter’s mispronunciation of the word android, the robot gains the name Andrew. Only Mr. Martin is excited by their new “gizmo”, and after the daughters both try to damage Andrew, the new family rule is that Andrew must be treated with the same respect due any member of the family. Soon the girls start treating him like a visiting cousin: someone who can help them with their homework, but someone they shouldn’t bother unnecessarily. After all, he is a “household robot”, he was purchased to help with housework, clean, garden, and fix things around the house. as the years pass, the youngest daughter, whom Andrew refers to as Little Miss, forms a special bond with him. (And yes, Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics are very quickly presented, but never dwelled on).
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Asimov’s guesses about the future were entertaining and fascinating for me. The opening scenes take place in 2014, and commercial androids are commonplace and becoming popular for wealthy families to have at home. But there are no cell phones, no digital cameras, no facebook, no big screen tv’s, no home computers, very little digital technology. Even later in the movie, as the decades pass, flying cars and holograms make an appearance, but no mention of suborbital anything, or smart phones, or genetic modifications, or social media. And as the decades go by, even robots go out of fashion.
Nightfall, by Isaac Asimov
Posted on: January 5, 2013
Isaac Asimov (1920 – 1992) was one of the first science fiction authors I read. I started with his Foundation books, moved onto the Robot books, and leapt into the fray from there. And Dr. Asimov is far more than just a science fiction writer. He wrote droves of non-fiction as well, eventually being involved in over 500 books of both fiction and non-fiction. His science fiction is utilitarian yet deep, showing a fascinating view of the human condition, yet easily grasped. After all these years, it’s had to believe I’ve never read Asimov’s famous short story Nightfall, which in the 1960s was voted the best science fiction short story ever written by the SFWA. The original short story Nightfall was written in 1941, and shortly before Asimov’s death he and Robert Silverberg adapted it into a full length novel.
Nightfall (short story) by Isaac Asimov
originally published in 1941
where I got it: listened! download the story from Escape Pod, here
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Lagash is a planet that never has a sunset, never sees stars, never lights a fire to keep the dark of night at bay. You see, Lagash has not one or two suns, but six that cross its sky. This is a civilization that has never been in the dark, never worried about inventing light bulbs, electricity, gas lamps or candles. They barely have an understanding of the burning pitch torch.
Until now. Every two thousand years or so the stars are aligned just right so that only Lagash’s dimmest star, Beta, remains in the sky as the planet’s dark companion slowly rotates around, causing a total solar eclipse.
When darkness falls, what will happen? The archaeological records show that most civilizations reached a peak, and then collapsed shortly after each eclipse that hits like clockwork. But this time things will be different. In the capital city, a percentage of the population waits safely in an underground shelter with all the records and knowledge of Lagash, prepared to wait out the worst and repopulate the planet if necessary.
Foundation read-along, part two
Posted on: January 16, 2012
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Hi Everyone, welcome to the second half of our read-along of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, hosted by Stainless Steel Droppings. I invite you to click back to Stainless Steel and visit all the other wonderful discussions. A huge thanks to Carl for hosting and organizing this eye opening read along for a science fiction classic!
Salvador Hardin was the first character in the book that we got to spend any significant time with. What are your thoughts on the grande finale of his plotting, scheming and maneuvering to get the Foundation through to the next Seldon crisis?
I LOVED it. Hardin is a brilliant strategist. Sure, it’s easy to call him manipulative, and he is, but predicting what frightened power hungry people will do really isn’t that difficult. All he’s doing to the four Kingdoms is giving them enough rope to hang themselves with. I’ve never minded characters of ambiguous morality, so Hardin was a pleasure to watch. And when the other planets start understanding that without the technologies of the Foundation they are nothing? their power plants won’t work, their medical devices won’t work. . . wouldn’t it be smarter for them to work with Hardin and the Foundation instead of fighting them tooth and nail?
Remind me never play chess with this dude.
What are your thoughts on the way in which control/manipulation to achieve Foundation ends began to shift with The Traders?
although these were the draggiest chapters for me (I want more Hardin, damnit!), they were the ones that bore the most interesting after-thinking. Just as it had been predicted, planets and their populations began to see through the Foundation religion and rejecting the missionaries. The rules weren’t exactly sure what was going on, but they knew they had been manipulated and they were understandably insulted.
Regarding the shift from religion to trading – a thinly veiled lesson that nothing lasts forever? that we shouldn’t feel shackled to the traditions of the past simply because they worked for our parents? Yes, there is a thousand year plan, but that doesn’t mean every year has to be exactly like the previous year.
Foundation read-along, part one
Posted on: January 9, 2012
This post is part of Stainless Steel Dropping’s Foundation read along, and coincidentally enough, works into my Vintage Sci Fi month as well. Written by Isaac Asimov as a series of short stories in the 1940s and published as such in Astounding Magazine, they would not be bound as the trilogy of novels we know today until the 1950’s, and then to far more fanfare in the 1960s. In 1966 the Foundation series won the Hugo for “best series”. Forty years after Asimov started typing that first Foundation story, he was paid one of the largest advances ever to write a fourth Foundation series, which was published in 1982 as Foundation’s Edge.
A story of a galactic empire in ruins, and one man’s mission to save it. A mission that couldn’t be started until long after he died. Hari Seldon knew what he was getting himself info, but Isaac Asimov couldn’t have possibly guessed in 1941, what he was getting himself into.
When Carl over at Stainless Steel Droppings told me a while ago he would be doing a Foundation read along in January, I was thrilled. What better way to introduce people to the masterpiece that is Foundation than through an easy to follow yet casually guided read along? He’s split the book in half, and since the whole thing is barely 300 pages long, that’s some easy readin’. I seem to (re)read Foundation every ten years or so, sometimes going forwards or backwards in the chronology, sometimes not. Last time I read the books I was in college (and still living on campus!) so it was certainly time for me to be reading Foundation again.
Carl provided some conversation starters to use as a jumping off point, lets see where this takes us, shall we?
For those who have read it before, how has it held up to your memory/feelings about previous reads?
Like I said, it’s been about ten years (yikes, maybe longer!) since I last read Foundation. I was a little nervous that it wouldn’t hold up, that I’d be bored, or underwhelmed, or annoyed by the characters. I shouldn’t have worried my pretty little head. Foundation is so far even better than I remember it. In fact, I feel like I’m finally old enough to understand it.
- In: Isaac Asimov | science fiction | scifi
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I Robot, by Isaac Asimov
Copyright 1950, my copy is circa 1970.
where I got it: have had it nearly forever
Written between 1940 and 1950 the short stories in Asimov’s I Robot came before Hal9000, before Terminator, or Dr. Soong’s Data and Lore, the uncanny valley or The Lifecycle of Software Objects. These were the days of Eniac, when the things that would be future computers took up entire rooms and required teams of programmers. Asimov envisioned a future were robots helped humanity do everything from everyday tasks to interstellar mining and solving the mysteries of the universe.
Although all the stories were written and published separately over the course of 8 or 9 years, the collection known as I Robot isn’t presented as a standard collection with a table of contents and breaks in between stories. A journalist is interviewing the now semi-retired Dr Susan Calvin, famous robo-psychologist about her lifetime working with robots. It’s the conversations between the journalist and Dr Calvin that weave the stories together. Asimov is no stranger to this trick, weaving together bits and pieces that were written over years or decades with a common thread or character.
The stories are presented in chronological order, from the non-speaking robots of Calvin’s youth, to robots who could talk, to robots that could learn and think and eventually lie and later pass for human. Like any programmable machine, a robot does exactly what we tell it to do, no more and no less.
So be careful what you tell ’em to do!
the Little Red Reviewer 
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