Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books

Isaac Asimov - The Caves of Steel (Robot)

Reviews
 

Take a complex scifi novel and meld it with a hardboiled murder mystery -- the result is "Caves of Steel." Isaac Asimov's most famous series about a future society infused with robotics continues with this book, a genre-bending trip into the future. Plenty of whodunnits and political tension, not to mention more robots --as well as a likable down-to-earth hero and his android sidekick.

Elijah Bailey, a cop in the future domed New York, is called to investigate a murder: a Spacer scientist was killed in Spacetown. Things get even worse when Lije is assigned a detective partner, Daneel Olivaw, who isn't just a Spacer -- but also a robot, albeit one who looks exactly like a human. Despite his dislike for Spacers and robots alike, Lije begins investigating the death of the scientist (who also created Daneel in his own image). Even so, his prejudices start to get in his way.

But the further Daneel and Lije dig, the more complex -- and sinister -- the mystery becomes. There are the Spacers, who have plans for Earth that almost no one knows about. There are the Medievalists, a growing faction of romantic-minded Earth citizens who long for the "good old days" and hate robots with a passion. And soon Lije discovers that the murderer might just be closer to him than he thinks...

"Caves" has aged remarkably well, considering that much of the futuristic stuff isn't particularly impressive anymore. But it's the layout of Asimov's futuristic civilization that is so impressive -- there are the overcrowded, resentful, technophobic Earth people, and the lofty, sparse, technology-loving Spacers. The vast cultural differences and friction give a feeling of deep realism. Neither civilization is portrayed as being wholly bad or good -- each has its moral and logical pros and cons. Are we headed for this? Maybe. Asimov doesn't preach too hard.

There are also deeper currents to a book that seems, on the surface, to be a straightforward SF/mystery. Asimov explores the mistrust, fear, lack of logic, and ignorance that keep people apart. The Spacers and Earth people have let their differences become mistrust: The overcrowded Earth people are crammed like sardines, with little food and highly regulated lives. The Spacers are underpopulated, live in luxury, and are assisted by robots.

Lije is a likable guy from the start; Asimov doesn't make him brilliant (he makes two erroneous accusions before figuring out the mystery) or lacking in biases. But he is determined to overcome his own shortcomings; his open-minded attitude is well-done. Daneel makes up for Lije's shortcomings by being logical and unbiased, but he doesn't have Lije's imagination -- and he's a wonderfully endearing android sidekick.

"Caves of Steel" is a solid mingling of hard sci-fi and murder mystery, with a likable pair of protagonists -- it may not be as convincing a picture of the future, but the plot and characters make up for it.
E. A Solinas

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The Caves of Steel is the first of Asimov's Robot novels. It expands on themes established in his earlier short stories of the social and political impact of the introduction of Robots into society. By the time of Caves of Steel Asimov had established his 3 Laws of Robotics and, as in the short stories, much of the narrative concerns the extent to which these laws protect the human masters from their mechanical slaves. However Caves of Steel is much more than a philosophical dialogue on the nature of natural versus artificial intelligence. It's a great detective story as well, and acts as a great introduction to Asimov's other literary career as a writer of detective fiction. It also takes an interesting look at one possible future for humankind on earth; many of his ideas are all the more impressive when one realises that this novel was published in 1954 (or 1953 if you count it's publication as a serial).

Isaac Asimov is often referred to as the Greatest Science Fiction Writer ever; wherever geeks gather this will always be open to debate. What is beyond debate however is his skill as a storyteller; he never makes the mistake of letting the big sci-fi ideas get in the way of telling a great tale. He quickly and efficiently draws one into the story, quickly creating characters we care about almost from the start. His skill in characterisation was, I feel, a major reason for his success and a large part of his continued popularity.

Caves of Steel can easily be read as a stand alone novel without exploring the earlier short stories, but it's my bet that once you've finished this book you'll want more. Do yourself a favour and read up on the various collections of Asimov's work; there are numerous web-pages devoted to him, and his Wikipedia entry is very comprehensive. If you're interested in the short stories start with The Complete Robot; this volume collects most of them together, including I Robot and The Rest of The Robots.
Rygel XVI

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Great story, if you like to read about the interaction between a human and a humaniform robot (which I do!)and in a rather 'classically' 50's style sci-fi setting.
CatBar

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Like much of Asimov's work, this is based around a mystery format (the murder of a 'Spacer' or space colonist in a camp outside the future steel city of New York). It's a set up that Asimov uses to discuss the possible problems that humans will face in the future and as a result the solving of the murder takes something of a back seat and is solved in a perfunctory way. It's very much a product of its time - but whereas I'd always associated Asimov with those early science-fiction writers who had a rosy view of the future, I was surprised to see that his Earth of the future in a planet on the cusp of crisis.

People are assigned specific rankings within the society, with each rank providing its own privileges. As a C-5 rated officer, Lije Baley is entitled to his own apartment, with a sink basin (so he and his family don't have to use the communal facilties within their apartment block if they don't wish to) and special food rations (much is made of the fact that he can eat proper chicken from time to time, rather than the yeast food products that are the norm) and he can use special moving pathways and have a seat on certain transporters. His greatest fear though is of being 'declassified', a fate that happened to his father - whereby whole families are thrown to the fringes of the city, deprived of its benefits, prohibited from getting a job and forced to scrape a living from the inadequate soil. It's this fear that provides one of his main motivations throughout the book - if he solves the mystery then he will get a promotion to C-6, which will see his family given greater benefits. If he fails - specifically, if he annoys the Spacer colony in doing so - then he will be declassified and his family will suffer his fate.

The crisis that Earth is facing is a familiar one to those who've read Asimov - the population is growing too quickly for its resources and at some point will force more people into 'declassified status' and starvation. At the same time, the population is increasingly hostile to the fact that robots are increasingly being used to perform jobs within the society (Asimov illustrates this with a tense scene set in a shoe store) and they're hostile to the Spacers - human colonists who have returned to Earth but who live in separate camps and who are dependent on using robots in the space colonies.

Set against this backdrop is the murder of a Spacer roboticist within the separate Spacer camp. With access to the camp heavily controlled and the carrying of weapons strictly prohibited, solving the murder is further hampered by the fact that the Spacers believe it could only have been an Earthman who did it. Fortunately, the Spacers have insisted that Lije have a partner to help him, the only problem is that this partner is R. Daneel Olivaw with the R standing for Robot and unlike the obviously mechanical looking robots on Earth, R. Daneel looks only too human ...

As I said, the mystery itself is dealt with in a perfunctory way because Asimov is not interested in producing a good mystery so much as he wants to explore the likely problems of the future. Indeed, the investigation is developed in such a way to reveal the ulterior motive that the Spacers had in assigning a robot to Lije, which is really a last ditch effort to see whether Lije's natural hostility and suspicion of robots can be countered so that he comes to realise that in using robots more, Earth can solve its problems by recolonising space. The reasoning is that if Lije can be converted to that viewpoint then the Medievalists - an underground group leading anti-robot and anti-Spacer protests - can be converted too.

There's a certain naivety to the text - Asimov is so intent on proving that his solution is the right one that he really creates straw men arguments against it. The characterisation is also at times rather strained. In particular, Asimov treats Lije's wife as the hysterical and foolish little woman (a woman who quite naturally gives up her job to raise her family) and the dialogue between her and Lije is stilted (as is the dialogue between Lije and his son). That said, there is enough to the story to pull you through and it's fascinating to see how people only 50 years ago conceived our future - as much for what they get wrong as what they get right.
quippe

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The leading light in robot technology and design is murdered outside the city of New York. The murderer, it appears, is an Earthman, a human, and the murder is destined to drive an even greater wedge between the human city dwellers and those who live beyond its boundaries in the colony of the Spacers, people who have been born and raised on distant planets. It is the Spacers who advocate the further development and use of robots - to the Earthmen, these are totally alien creatures whose only purpose is to do them out of a job. But the police have to investigate the murder, and that means collaborating with both Spacers and robots.

"Caves of Steel" was written in the early-1950's, so it truly is a vintage work. This is Asimov speculating on the role, function, and morality of the robot, elaborating the rules which will ensure they cannot hurt a human. If the science seems a little quaint by modern standards, this is a future world conceived at the mid-point of the last century. It really is an essay from another world.

What Asimov achieves, however, is an enquiry into how we perceive strangers, how we tolerate, or fail to tolerate, what we find alien. We struggle to hold on to traditional values, but those values were themselves once novel and alien, and often have rather tenuous provenance. There is a timeless quality in his enquiry into intolerance and discrimination.

As a detective story, Asimov twists and turns the plot, but this is hardly a science fiction whodunnit. It is more of an investigation of how we could use artificial intelligence, written at a time when computing was in its infancy. The passage of time does make the science fiction appear quaint, and as a detective story it has severe limitations. However, this is a neatly paced and well written little novel which retains considerable fascination as an early classic of computing and robotics, and is a must read for anyone who considers him/herself a fan of science fiction.
Budge Burgess

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