Book 1), The Caves of Steel (R. Daneel Olivaw

As always Asimov writes a terrific story. What was surprising is the similarity to today. The Medievalists in many ways are similar to those who today would like to return to the past, one they see through rose-colored glasses. The Spacers want them to reach for a new reality and enjoy a brighter future. The task is convincing those that live in the past to learn to take charge of their destiny and join the modern world's journey to the future!

Audiobook

I usually round up in my ratings but I feel that this book isn't really close to a 4 to me. Maybe a 3.3. So to make that clear, I'm rounding down my rating.

It was kind of hysterical that Baley kept pulling a "Poirot" and being totally wrong. He would make all these dramatic statements and really think he had it all figured out but would be all wrong. He did this 3 times but ended up being right on the last proclamation. The narrator was good but the chief of police and the wife came off as super whiny. I don't know if this was intentional but I hated it when he would narrate their voices. And Baley having to solve the murder down to the minute (before midnight), I'm sure this was supposed to come off as dramatic but was so lame it was ridiculous. Like R. Daneel or his supervisor would say at exactly 12:01 pm, "Stop, don't tell me who did it. Your time is up."

I read this for my sci-fi book club. I'm sorry to say that I'm finding I don't really like a lot of these classic sci-fi books. Although I do wonder if I would have liked it more if I read this with my teenage brain. My book club is reading Ray Bradbury next who I absolutely loved in high school. I hope I'm not disappointed.

This is the [n]th time I’ve read this book, so obviously, it’s one of my faves! To me, it’s like sliding your feet into your super-comfy slippers or snuggling onto a loveseat with a blanket and hot cocoa on a snowy day, or… but you get the idea.

In a way, this is a classic murder mystery, with a hard-boiled, flawed, yet lovable detective… but it’s also classic science fiction. In my opinion, the mystery is handled well, the ending is satisfying (and surprising) and the characters are some of my favorite characters of all time.

I also love the way the story came about: Asimov liked writing robot short stories where the robot was shown sympathetically instead of in the typical (for that time – early 1950s) negative light of Frankenstein’s monster. His publisher asked for a novel and Asimov wasn’t sure he could write an entire novel about robots. “Sure you can. How about an overpopulated world in which robots are taking over human jobs?” Asimov didn’t want to write a heavy sociological story. His publisher said, “Do it your way. You like mysteries. Put a murder in such a world and have a detective solve it with a robot partner. If the detective doesn’t solve it, the robot will replace him.” And in that way, the fire was lit, and this book was written shortly thereafter. Love it!

Of course, because it was written in the early 1950s, there are “quaint” and definitely outdated views included, but it’s easy for me to look past these… it was written in the 1950s! (I don’t cavil at daughters being “sold off” into marriage in Shakespeare.) But, also because it was written in the 1950s, I marvel at some of the “good guesses” about the future that are included (and naturally, forgive Asimov when the guesses fall short – he didn’t have a crystal ball). Some of these are when he tries to describe what (to me) sounds like a microchip or how Detective Elijah Baley is manipulating an image with his fingers, much the way I might do on my smart phone or touch screen – making it larger or smaller with pinching or expanding motions.

And then, there are the characters… I absolutely love Elijah Baley and his robot partner, Daneel Olivaw – and their interactions. They are the reason I, every couple of years, read all fourteen books in the Robots-Galactic Empire-Foundation series (with one short story thrown in after the first two books which includes Baley and Olivaw). In my opinion, for anyone who is a lover of classic science fiction – and especially for those who love robot stories – this one (and obviously, the next and the next and the next…) is a must read!

More than eight billion people are on Earth, crowded into enclosed cities. Robots are hated because they are displacing workers. Hundreds of years before, Earthlings emigrated to other planets, advanced in technology, and based their worlds on the use of robots. One spaceport on Earth near New York City is inhabited by "Spacers" and is protected from Earthlings, who clearly dislike them. A Spacer is murdered in Spacetown and Elijah Baley is asked to investigate with an andromorphic robot, R. Daneel Olivaw from Aurora in the Outer Worlds.

The conflict between people and robots can be as contemporary as it is in future Earth. Dr. Stephen Hawking has been quoted as saying that full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race, and Asimov's positronic brain portends this.

I read this book after the second one in the series ("The Naked Sun") because it was available first, and I think the second one is better. Baley makes many wrong guesses in this one about who murdered the Spacer, and it seemed to me to drag out the story. However, both books are well worth reading in my opinion because Asimov's ideas can give us a glimpse of how future Earth might become.

Continuing my Isaac Asimov re-read it is interesting that how much better Caves of Steel , the first of Asimov's 'Robot' novels is compared to the Foundation novels published just a few years prior. Those stories were basically just 'idea' novels, no frills just an exploration of an Idea. Caves of Steel is also about ideas, but here the ideas are background to the main plot, and approached tangentially. Also Elijah Baley is certainly Asimov's most complete character yet, much more rounded than any character in the Foundation trilogy.
The main plot is a murder mystery in which the human protagonist, Elijah Baley is forced to partner with a robot, R. Daneel Olivaw, to solve the crime. R. Daneel Olivaw is not just a robot but a robot who is virtually indistinguishable from a human. The friction between them while they solve the case, allows Asimov to make some subtle (for Asimov) points about bigotry and techno-phobia. The mystery is also fairly well done -which is icing on the cake.
Underneath, the meta-plot as it were, is the future fate of humanity. It is clear to reader that Baley lives in a dystopia, although Asimov doesn't present it explicitly as such. Baley even believes that the 'Cities' (The Caves of Steel of the title) are the ultimate in human progress and ingenuity. The cities are Pruitt-Igoe writ large on a megalopolis scale. Everything is centrally planned and the Bureaucracy runs everything. Housing is assigned, kitchens and bathrooms are communal and food is rationed. All benefits are determined by your 'rating', which can go up or down based on the whims of the Government. In the end Baley comes to believe that humans need to leave Earth and colonize other worlds and that the return to a 'frontier' society can restore that lost spirit of individualism that will allow humanity to escape the stagnation of the 'Cities'.
I should note that though Asimov's writing has improved there are still problems, the characterization of Baley's wife probably being the most egregious. I am not normally too sensitive to that kind of thing but even I could tell how bad it is. But still in my Asimov re-read this is his best effort so far.

In the far distant future, Earth has become vastly overcrowded and the strain on resources has forced humanity into living cheek by jowl in massive closed in cities – the caves of steel of the title. They no longer ever venture into the outside world, having basic robots to do any outside work that's needed. Living accommodation is small – meals are taken in huge communal kitchens and bathing and toileting facilities are all contained in the Personals, again communal and with strict social rules to preserve some semblance of privacy. The Outer Worlds are inhabited by Spacers, the descendants of people from Earth who colonised some of the planets thousands of years earlier. Spacer worlds are the opposite of Earth – underpopulated and disease free. Spacers no longer allow immigration from Earth, guarding the comparative luxury of their lives, along with their health. Naturally, they are resented by the people of Earth.

Spacers have developed much more advanced robots and, with the agreement of the government of Earth, are introducing them into Earth society. The robots are hated since people see them as a threat to their jobs, and loss of a job can mean loss of the few privileges that people can still have – their own washbasin, the right to an occasional meal in their own home. So when a Spacer robotocist is murdered, it seems obvious the culprit will be an Earth person. Elijah Bailey, C-Class Detective is called in to investigate and, to his horror, is partnered with a Spacer robot, R. Daneel Olivaw, so advanced that he can easily pass as human.

This is sci-fi... but it's also a great murder mystery. Proper crime with all different kinds of motivations at work, clues, detection, departmental politics, the works! Asimov wrote it after someone challenged him by saying sci-fi and mystery were incompatible genres. Asimov's own view was that sci-fi can incorporate any literary genre, and this is his proof.

Along with the mystery Asimov creates a fairly chilling view of a possible future if Earth's population continues to increase. It's fairly easy 60 years on to pick holes in some of the things he foresaw, and didn't, and personally, doing that is one of the great pleasures for me. I love that he could create something as sophisticated as the positronic brain – still being used by sci-fi writers as the basis for robots and androids today – but didn't think of the mobile phone, so that poor Lije has to go out to phone boxes in the middle of the night. I love that he claimed that women still stuck to traditional clasps on their purses rather than adopting new-style magnetic catches. (We finally made it, Mr Asimov! We advanced that far!) I love that he came up with a kind of method for information retrieval that sounds not unlike the old punch-card system, but couldn't take the extra leap that would have led him to computers. I love that people happily use all kinds of nuclear devices, cheerfully spraying radiation around as they go. He almost comes up with an e-reader... but not quite...

But the basic idea of an over-populated world where every human activity is carefully regimented and controlled to make best use of dwindling resources is very well done, and the resentment of humans over machines taking over their jobs has proved to be pretty prophetic. The Medievalists who look nostalgically back to a time not unlike the 1950s have more than a little in common with our more fundamentalist back-to-the-earth green groups of today.

One of the other things I love about the Elijah Bailey books is that, although the world is thousands of years older, all the people are stuck in a '50s time-warp. Gee, gosh, the language is simply tremendous! Lije's favourite exclamation is “Jehoshaphat!” - I always find myself using it for weeks after I've read one of the books. The women stay at home, try to look pretty for their husbands and bring up the children, which is all their limited brains and talents are really fit for, while the men go off and do manly things, like science and running about the streets with blasters and such like. So you not only get a look at how Asimov saw the possible future, but you get a real picture of '50s American life thrown in for free.

The plot is great and totally fair-play. Lije's detection methods are a bit on the slapdash side, I admit – basically, he decides whodunit, accuses them, is proved wrong, and then decides it was actually someone else... and so on. But each accusation adds something, both to his future guesswork, and to the reader's understanding of the society he's operating in. And Jehoshaphat! When the solution finally comes, it's a good one!

Golly gee, I hope you read this book. It may be a bit dated, but it's still loads of fun and with plenty of interest to either sci-fi or mystery fans. Jeepers, you'll be sorry if you don't...

Classic sci-fi doesn't get more classic that Isaac Asimov, and Asimov classics don't get more classic that his Robot trilogy. I recently listened to the audio version of The Caves of Steel, book 1 of Asimov's Robot Series. I had read it years ago, and was not disappointed in the audio update.

On one level, this is a simple detective story. New York detective Elijah Baley is teamed up with a new partner, R. Daneel Olivaw, to solve the murder of a robotocist. The twist: Daneel is a robot himself! As Elijah and Daneel track down leads and learn to work together, Asimov builds a future world that is both imaginative and prophetic.

This audio version is great. It's a straight, single-actor reading, not a dramatization, but William Dufris pulls off the narration perfectly. His voicing of Daneel brought to mind Star Trek's Data, which is appropriate, as Data is clearly modeled after Asimov's vision of a robotic future.

If you've never read Asimov, this is a great place to start. If you have, he's always worth returning to!

.“The Caves of Steel” is a 1954 novel by Isaac Asimov, the first of his three robot/detective novels. In it, he pairs an Earthman with a robot as fellow investigators in a murder investigation.

But what I found fascinating about this book (after re-reading it some 40 years after first reading it as a kid) is that Asimov touches on a host of other social and political issues of the day- the early 1950’s. You don’t have to look to hard to find that the book, like Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World, shows us a bit what a socialist Earth would have looked like. Here, everyone is crowded together in cities under giant domes. There is very little privacy and even private bathrooms are often unknown. Most people eat in large communal dining halls and rarely have permission to eat in their own homes. Many things are not available for purchase and must be obtained with permission and with special permits. Everyone seems to be assigned housing and jobs according to some central plan and bureaucracy. Another thing that stood out in re-reading this work is that the attitude of Earthlings to robots and spacers seems rooted in prejudices and there are some parallels with civil rights which was a heated issue in the 1950’s.

Interestingly, Asimov’s social commentary is not a major plotline and is almost missed with a focus on the murder mystery and the strange world of the future that he has created.

Above all, this science fiction-robotic-murder-mystery is eminently readable and a quite an enjoyable read. Eljiah Bailey and R Daneel Olivaw have a captivating relationship. In all, Asimov continued this pair in The Naked Sun (1955) and then many years later in the Robots of Dawn (1983) and Robots and Empire, which featured Olivaw, not Bailey.

I read this book as a kid, and became an instant Asimov devotee.

Asimov worked through some basic laws of robotics that are still quoted and referenced today. He was a true pioneer in this field- and many others.

In the beginning we have a NYC detective-Elijah Bailey investigating the murder of a prominent citizen. As he investigates he comes to the conclusion that a robot was responsible. THis is thought to be impossible since hardwired into all robots is the restriction that that no robot can harm a human. This is a classic tale as Asimov worked through a lot of situations that later writers drew upon for their own stories.

One of the things that makes this story so memorable is Asimov's attempts to ferret out how machines and humans will interact as the machines become more complex.

if you are a fan of stories depicting the increasing complexity of human and machine interaction, then this book is for you.

Highly recommmended.

I've been meaning to dive into Asimov's groundbreaking Robot series for some time, and finally got around to reading this first book last year. It's classic Golden Age science fiction, full of amazing possibilities, yet tinged with noir overtones that drive the action toward a solution I for one didn't see coming.

It may sound like the setup to a contemporary distopia, and yet Asimov paints a more realistic picture than his darker counterparts by having all forms of reaction to this world: positive, negative, indifferent, and everywhere in between.

This range of human emotion is best expressed by the protagonist Detective Elijah "Lije" Baley. He's a classic hard-boiled crime fighter dropped into a future crowded city, distrustful of many and yet open to new ideas. He's not best pleased to get saddled with his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw to solve a spacer's murder, but he pursues his goal with single-minded ferocity despite a number of plausible red herrings thrown in his path.

The dynamic relationship Baley and Olivaw share throughout the novel paves the way for many successors to come, but still reads like a fresh invention. Like with any Asimov tale, the world itself is alive with discovery. The scene where these two partners dodge passengers along crisscrossing, multistoried moving sidewalks in pursuit of a suspect practically begs for a cinematic treatment, while the various levels of the steel cave are gradually peeled back one by one.

Incredibly, Asimov even avoids the usual science fiction fallacy of pretending religion will vanish like some exotic animal in the future. Not only do humans still espouse various beliefs in this brave and burgeoning new world, but such traditions impact the story in a climatic moment that offers hope not just for the protagonists but the world and its future.

Combining action, philosophy, a pinch of romance and a good mystery, "Caves of Steel" offers something for every level of science fiction fan. It's a genre classic that offers a foundation for things to come and yet stands as a great work in its own right.

Caves of Steel (The Robot Series Book 1) is the first book in the Robot Series by Isaac Asimov. I've finished my third trip through this book and enjoyed it as much as the first. Many others have written excellent reviews of this book, and I defer to them for details.

Even though the book is now 50+ years old, the scenarios are still thought provoking and the plots are still intriguing. The specific SciFi devices have been, in part, made obsolete by advances in physics. However, they serve as excellent vehicles to create a fascinating future world. Some of the imagined advances are still far in the future, or, very likely, will always lie in the realm of fiction. For example, the "positronic brain" is a flight of fancy that will never be realized-- there are many better ways to create computing machines. Similarly, interstellar travel by human beings is extremely unlikely. Don't worry about it! Fictional devices like this do not diminish the book's appeal and value, in my opinion. Just substitute any technology or imaginative device you like that might produce a similar result, and the rest of the plot follows along just fine.

My recommendation: read this one, even if you've never found a SciFi book that you like! If you like this one, finish out the four-book robot series. If you enjoy those books, continue to the Foundation Series. The whole journey through Asimov's rich future world is a stimulating, entertaining, and thought-provoking experience.

This book is eminently suitable and appealing for a YA audience. For YA readers, this and other older books in the Robot and Foundation series offer a conciseness and pace that is especially attractive.

The Caves of Steel is Isaac Asimov's first attempt to fuse the science fiction and mystery novel genres, as well as a precursor to that hoary post-90s cliche, the buddy cop movie, in which two disparate personalities are forced to work together to solve a crime. In this case, the buddies are a human detective with a dislike of robots and, wouldn't you know it, a robot.

I liked the world Asimov created for this book, one in which a small number of alien "Spacers," descendants of human colonists to other worlds from generations past, live in uneasy proximity with Earth's native population. The latter is riddled with resentment against both the Spacers and against robots, which threaten livelihoods because of their ability to do many jobs better (and cheaper) than human workers (the situation is analogous to that in Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano, published only a year or two earlier, which also featured a future society obsessed with a fear of automation). The Spacers, on the other hand, see robots as quality of life enhancers.

The disparity in outlook is driven by the fact that the Spacers have few kids and value leisure, which robots help facilitate. Think of them as extraterrestrial metrosexuals. Natives of Earth, on the other hand, apparently continue to breed like rabbits despite official policy, a situation that threatens to cause an eventual global catastrophe brought about by exhaustion of resources, especially food.

It's an interesting look at contrasting views of life but I think Asimov is on the wrong track with his view of Earth's situation. For starters, since the introduction of reliable and inexpensive birth control in the form of the Pill (about a decade after Caves of Steel's publication), birthrates in developing or developed societies have actually plunged, not grown, so the real threat to humanity isn't overpopulation but underpopulation as birthrates decline past replacement levels. He also fails to grasp that advancing technology mitigates threats of resource depletion by either inventing new ways to exploit previously unattainable reserves (shale oil, for example) or finding suitable alternatives.

Asimov's Earth society on Caves of Steel resembles nothing so much as life in the old Soviet Union and its satellites, with its communal housing, strict rationing, social regimentation and granting of special privileges that entitle the fortunate (or well connected) to small luxuries (your own shower, for example).

The mystery itself is decent but Asimov concentrates more on the character of the detective Elijah Baley, who must juggle his personal feelings against robots, his desire to please his boss in order to advance his career, his love for his wife and child and his sense of duty. Along the way he tosses out a couple of incorrect but inventive solutions to the mystery that keep the conflict hopping.

Not the best mystery I've ever read but a fairly imaginative yarn nevertheless. I understand Asimov returned to these characters in a couple of sequels and I'll be interested to see where he took them. Meanwhile, Caves of Steel is worth a look, though not a must-read.

As always, Isaac Asimov's imagined future is mind-blowing. Coincidentally, this was my only problem with the book, as he starts off The Caves of Steel with a mystery, but over the course of the book spends as much, if not more time, explaining his world and philosophizing about the problems these future societies face than he does on the actual plot of the book. This is only a problem because I was so interested in the present story and the two main characters that I would have liked him to spend more time on this.
Nevertheless, Asimov's writing and imagination, as always, are quite awe-inspiring, and The Caves of Steel is still a very good book, and I look forward to the rest of this series.

Years ago I read, The Caves of Steel (R. Daneel Olivaw, Book 1) by Isaac Asimov, and I have re-read it just recently. Asimov's writing has, in general, lost its golden luster in my eyes--in my youth I was awed by Asimov, particularly the Foundation series.

However, while the writing may have lost its luster, his ideas have not (even if specific ones seem out of date now), and I think that this book is one of his better written books.

The story starts after the murder of Sarton, a Spacer who had been living on Earth in the special Spacer colony. Lije Baley, a New York detective is teamed up with R. Daneel Olivaw, a robot assigned by the Spacers to work with the Earthers in solving the crime. In the past, riots against Spacers and robots have led to tensions, and it is feared that Sarton's murder will spark a complete break.

Lije must navigate his personal life and own ambivalences in dealing with Olivaw, who has a nearly perfect human appearance. Lije tests out several theories with Olivaw in who the murderer could be before finally figuring it out correctly.

The Caves of Steel is a detective story set in the future, and that is its primary forward momentum. As populations grew, megacities developed, which are essentially enclosed, cramped spaces where humans do nearly everything communally. Promotions and added responsibilities increase a person's ranking, providing greater living space, more privacy, real chicken, and so on. However, the primary theme of the novel, for me, is that of xenophobia. Xenophobia of spacers and robots. What's interesting is that Lije (and many others) is not wholly inaccurate. The Spacers do have a hidden agenda (even if benevolent) and the robots are replacing humans in jobs--but the society amplifies these real concerns into hateful stereotypes that are destructive, the block Lije's and Earth's ability to escape its disastrous future.

Let's not forget, of course, that this novel fleshes out more the Three Laws of Robotics. While not central to the novel, they do come in to play in how Lije evaluates Olivaw. AI, "personhood," and robotics have two--to me--particularly interesting turns in this novel. The first is that human live in these megacities (i.e., caves of steel), while the Spacers and their robots live, in Spacetown on Earth, in the open. Many see cities as antithetical to being "human," particularly in cramped, subsistence existence. Who is more "unnatural" in this sense? Lije or Olivaw? Also, at one point, a human created robot--which one cannot mistake for anything but a robot--is killed. Most of the people around Lije don't view it as a homicide because it's just a robot. Property damage. But Lije has clearly shifted in his thinking, but he explicitly calls it murder. His contact with Olivaw has allowed him to see sentience as what gives a "thing" "personhoood"--thus murder is possible.

Very much recommended. A classic of science fiction that has earned the designation.

Elijah (Lije) Baley is a detective who lives in a future city of New York who is given a controversial murder to resolve. The death of a Spacer is seen as a major incident and something that must be solved in order to avoid potential fighting between the Spacers and the people of Earth who current hold an uneasy, if rather segregated, peace.

Most controversially, Lije is given a partner from the spacers to investigate with: a robot, Daneel Olivaw. Robots on Earth are generally seen as an under-race, taking people's jobs and generally regarded with suspicion or with distaste. Spacers have them integrated into daily life. Daneel is a notch above the robots usually seen on Earth: humanoid and to all intents human-like.

So this is a considerable difficulty for Lije, and one which takes some adjusting to, by Lije, his wife Jezebel and his son Bentley, all of whom have to adjust to living with a robot.

As the investigation continues, Lije goes from mistrust to respectful admiration of Daneel, and a greater understanding of the universe from a Spacer's perspective.

A book that tackles issues of race, bigotry and hatred, written before the US race riots of the 1960's? This still has a narrative drive and the power to shock. Whilst it is a mystery story, what makes it work is the matter of fact placing into a future regulated society where atomic war has led people to live in vast regimented `caves of steel', where food is regulated (and mainly yeast-based), travel is not by car but by walkway, living space is a premium and jobs are increasingly scarce and under threat of being given to a robot at any time.

There are parts that have dated, though the core of the tale still works. There's the odd info dump and clunky `discussion' - Asimov spends a page or two explaining where the names Elijah and Jezebel come from, and can't resist giving a history lecture, for example - but on the whole its prose is tight and there is little space given for reflective bloat. The tale is done in less than 200 pages.

What was amusing in my teens - Lije's use of 'Jehoshaphat!' as a swear-word - is a little annoying now and the need to end some chapters on a grand reveal ("Your honour, it was the butler that did it!") belies its pulp origins. The singular view of the Bible as the most important religious book in the world may also jar in today's more secular global network, though perhaps understandable from a 1950's viewpoint. So too the use and acceptance of tobacco in social circumstances.

But in the end, nearly sixty years on, it's still a grand read. Asimov's description of a world under population stress is still interesting and reminded me of Orwell's 1984 in its depiction of dreary existence.

Most importantly, the `whodunit' in a whodunit mystery is still quite a surprise, though as we would hope, quite logical once explained.

In the wider scheme of things, of course, as well as being the start of Asimov's own Grand Scheme to link the Robot series with the Foundation series, this is Asimov's version of a Heinleinesque Future History: see The Roads Must Roll, for example. Though not as skilful as Heinlein's version, nor as opinionated, it is a great read. Still.

Um milênio no futuro, dois avanços da ciência alteraram o curso da história da humanidade: a colonização da galáxia e a criação do cérebro positrônico.
As pessoas tem de viver nos subterrâneos da Terra, com medo de espaços abertos, pois não há muito lugar sobrando na superfície, e é preciso se defender de possíveis ataques de outros planetas colonizados por humanoss.
Este livro relata a estranha parceria entre um detetive de Nova Iorque e um robot humanóide, que precisam trabalhar em conjunto.
Assim como a maioria das pessoas deixadas para trás na Terra superpopulosa, o detetive Elijah Baley possui pouca simpatia pelos robots.
Porém, quando um Spacer é assassinado sob circunstâncias misteriosas, Baley é enviado para rastrear o assassino.
Um Spacer é um humano que vive em outros planetas colonizados pelos terráqueos. Eles estão sempre com medo dos humanos que permaneceram na Terra.
Só que ele tem de dividir a missão com R. Daneel Olivaw: um robot positrônico sofisticado e construído para obedecer às três Leis principais da robótica, elaboradas pelo escritor Isaac Asimov, no livro "Eu, Robô, e que controlam o comportamento dos robôs, de forma a tornar possível a existência de robots inteligentes (as leis pressupõem inteligência suficiente para distinguir o bem do mal) e que não se revoltassem contra o domínio humano. São elas:
* 1ª Lei: Um robô não pode ferir um ser humano ou, por omissão, permitir que um ser humano sofra algum mal.
* 2ª Lei: Um robô deve obedecer as ordens que lhe sejam dadas por seres humanos, exceto nos casos em que tais ordens entrem em conflito com a Primeira Lei.
* 3ª Lei: Um robô deve proteger sua própria existência desde que tal proteção não entre em conflito com a Primeira e/ou a Segunda Lei.
O relacionamento entre eles, é claro, não funciona muito bem...
Além disso, ainda tem de lidar com os Medievalistas, que desprezam os robots, por estarem tirando os empregos dos humanos.
A temática central do livro é a exploração das conseqüências sociais dessa contínua e não linear urbanização do planeta. È saber lidar com as diferenças, com confiança.
Daneel Olivaw vai aparecer novamente em outras estórias de Asimov, inclusive com Elijah Baley em "The naked sun".
A trilogia Fundação acontece depois desse tempo. Leiam na ordem.

A good murder mystery, interesting plot. It is enjoyable to read as long as you keep in mind that it was published in 1954. Far in the future without cell phones, laptops, etc. Still, a fun book to read.

"The Caves of Steel" is another of Isaac Asimov's classic science fiction stories. In this one, he successfully blends science fiction with a detective novel. Teaming up New York City detective Lije Bailey and R(obot). Daneel Olivaw who represents the spacer interests in the investigation of the murder of a Spacer Ambassador (Roj Nemmenuh Sarton). For me, this is the earliest example of a great Asimov novel. There is no doubt that "I, Robot" and the Foundation novels are very good, but they are essentially collections of short stories which were turned into a novel. His other earlier novels, the precursor novels to the foundation series, simply aren't as good either scientifically or in terms of literature.

In re-reading this novel, it is amazing the job that Asimov does in conveying a complex social situation, such as the one which exists on Earth and between Earth and the Spacers, Earthmen and Robots, etc., without taking three or four chapters to discuss all the issues. The first chapter opens with the murder having already been committed, and Asimov adeptly provides in the telling of the story the Earth attitude towards robots as well as the attitude of Lije Bailey, as well as other key information about the society and the mystery as well.

Commissioner Enderby is a long time friend of Lije, and he selects him to team up with a robot (R. Daneel Olivaw) to solve the murder. There doesn't seem to be any easy answer. An Earthman is suspected as all the Spacers have undergone cerebroanalysis which has shown them incapable of Murder, (who was to have met with the murdered Spacer shortly after the body was discovered, and thus a suspect). But the only way an Earthman could do it would be to venture outside of the Caves of Steel, and Earthmen have become agoraphobic after living for so long in their protective cities.

The relationship between Lije and Daneel is at first very strained, though Daneel is apparently unaware of it Lije first concludes that Daneel is in fact the victim and that the crime was a fraud, and later he concludes that Daneel is the murderer, a robot without the first law. However, both of these theories prove embarrassingly wrong. At the same time, Lije has started to rely on Daneel's abilities, though he seems unaware of just how much help he is getting from his partner.

Most of this book is very good, but there are some small problems which prevent me from giving it five stars. It bothered me quite a bit that both Lije and Daneel mention that Lije accused Daneel of murder twice, when in actuality the first time it was not an accusation of murder, but rather that Daneel was in fact the supposed victim. One has to wonder if Asimov changed the nature of the accusation at some point and then forgot to go back and edit this section. It also bothers me from a technical standpoint that on the one hand it is made clear how Daneel appears human enough to fool any non-robotic human, and yet when discussing noticeable differences there are some key areas, such as emotions and eating, where people would obviously notice that something was different about Daneel. There are also some gaps in knowledge which one would expect that Daneel would have been given, but those might be explained by the back story of his having been rushed into use as a result of the murder.

Overall though, those problems don't detract much from what is a very successful marriage of science fiction and mystery. This book was first published in serial form in "Galaxy Magazine", from October through December of 1953 and then published in book form in 1954 by Doubleday. It was nominated for the Retro Hugo in 2004 for novels first published in 1953, and of course it led to the sequel "The Naked Sun" in 1956, and then much later additional works as well as Asimov merged his Robot and Foundation universes. The addition which I read also includes a nice introduction by Isaac Asimov in which he discusses the history of his robot stories.

In a world where most humans live in vast enclosed cities, never seeing the naked sky, Elijah Bailey is a homicide detective assigned to an unusual case. A murder has occurred in the "spacer city". Spacers are earth-men who colonized the stars generations before, and went on to achieve technological advantages, mainly through the use of Earth-shunned robotics, that give them a serious edge on the mother planet. The murder itself is a seemingly impossible circumstance, which is a specialty of Asimov's mysteries. And Elijah must solve it with the help of a humaniform robot.

Asimov builds a likely sounding future society that is at once oddly familiar and totally different from our experiences, and ties it in with technologies and off-world humans who are interesting and complicated. Asimov was above all else a plot technician. Often his characters don't outshine other writers in raw emotion, but his stories are unrivaled for sensible, interesting plots with unexpected but highly believable and logical twists. The Caves of Steel is one such book. The emotions of Detective Bailey do come through as he faces his individual version of the society wide agoraphobia, but the focus is on the mystery and its accoutrements. As is all Asimov, The Caves of Steel is enjoyable, fascinating, and a fair mystery ... you have the clues at the same time the detectives do.

Another one of Asimov's five star novels! Caves of Steel has New York City 1000 years in the future as it's backdrop. This metropolis has expanded with its population explosion into the only available space - down into the depths of the Earth itself. The people of Earth live in constant fear of attacks from other colonized planets of humans. The polar opposites of the Earthmen and the Spacers exaggerate the effect of our world's resources on the most basic elements of life, itself. Our most basic of human needs such as privacy, space, food are altered like elements of an equation.
The book opens with a seedling community of Spacers rooted on Earth to provide Earthmen the chance at an introduction to the alternate culture. As one can guess, this does not produce the desired effect. Earthmen don't only fear Spacers; they are terrified of robots as well. Tensions hit a peak between cultures when a Spacer is murdered. Relations between the two cultures hang by a thread. The only hope at defusing the situation lies with Elijah Bailey, a detective from the Earthmen, and a Spacer named R. Daneel Olivaw racing to solve the crime before the hope of any harmony becomes completely unraveled. Are the two men as they seem? Can they be trusted? One thing is certain; this is not a normal murder.
What a thrilling book that incorporates mystery and suspense! Caves of Steel is a must read for both science fiction fans and mystery readers, alike. The twists and turns will captivate you. I highly recommend it.---Will

It's been many years since I read Asimov's Foundation (Foundation Novels), or any science fiction at all. Now, from my new perspective as a novelist myself, I see what I've been missing.

It's absolutely fascinating to watch Asimov create a world that never was, and even more so when he addresses the challenge of creating R. Daneel Olivaw, a quite believable and even sympathetic character who happens to be a robot.

He starts by introducing another robot, R. Sammy, who is far less "human" than R. Daneel. Then he shows in several scenes how robots are despised and feared by humans on Earth. Then Detective Elijah Baley makes it clear he does not want to partner with R. Daneel, but has no choice.

Only after all that is R. Daneel himself introduced.

R. Daneel soon shows he is no ordinary robot by taking the initiative to quell a disturbance in a shoe store, an achievement Baley reluctantly admits to himself was impressive. When Baley takes R. Daneel home, his wife Jesse is attracted to the "man" she does not know is a robot.

The shoe store incident and Jesse's reaction demonstrate that R. Daneel is close enough to human to fool other humans. R. Daneel then discloses to Baley that he is the first prototype of an advanced robot, more closely human, developed for the express purpose of interacting with humans to learn more about how humans think.

As the story progresses, the reader, along with Detective Baley, finds it increasingly easy to accept R. Daneel on his terms, within his limitations, and even to feel emotions for this constructed machine. A remarkable writing accomplishment by Asimov.

Written in 1953, and projecting 1000 years into the future, Asimov's description of New York City is fascinating, not so much for the technology, where his imagination has not approached even what we already know has come to pass, but in the evolving relationships between people, and more importantly, between people and their government. Here, one fears, Asimov's insights are too frighteningly accurate.

Having now published two novels --- A Good Conviction, a NYC-based legal thriller which tells the story of a young man wrongly imprisoned in Sing Sing for a murder he did not commit by a Manhattan ADA who may have known he was innocent ... and The Heretic (Library of American Fiction), a historical novel describing the persecution of a family of secret Jews by the Catholic Church on the eve of the Spanish Inquisition --- I have devised a self-education project to help me become more attuned to the techniques and styles of other authors, and thus (hopefully) become a better novelist myself.

"The Caves of Steel" is one of the novels I've read as part of this self-education project.

I'm organizing my thoughts into various categories relevant to writing, such as ... "beginnings" ... "conflict" ... "characters" ... and others, and I've posted my observations as a blog, which turns out to be a wonderful way for me to organize and retrieve my notes.

This also puts my thinking in the public domain. So if you'd like to see my evolving comments about writing novels, I invite you to take a look at my "Education of a Novelist" blog.

You can reach my blog by searching the web for "weinstein education of a novelist."

LEW WEINSTEIN

"Caves of Steel" is Asimov's second robot centered book. On the surface, we have a murder mystery which Elijah Baley is asked to investigate. Robot R. Daneel Olivaw is to accompany and help Baley. This mystery is quite good. I do suggest that reading "I, Robot" might be helpful for the reader's understanding of robot psychology. The resolution of the mystery is, also, good.

There is a second level to this and the following Elijah Baley stories. The 'spacers' have realized that their approach to colonizing the stars has serious problems (partly having to do with the use of robots), just as the 'earthmen' left behind have a nearly reciprocal problem (partly due to the total absence of robots). The spacers are hoping to find a third alternative to humankind's future (possibly androids such as R. Daneel may aid the third alternative) and believe that Baley's investigation(s) and his interaction with R. Daneel will provide some clues as to how to bring that third alternative to reality. This theme is in the background of each story, but is not actively in the foreground plot(s).

Why not rate this very good story even higher? Well, to me, Asimov has a stilted manner of writing and his stories can be somewhat wooden and lack a feeling of fidelity to human realities. His themes are, often, clearer than his story plots. In short, he is/was not as good a storyteller as I wish he were /had been.

I do recommend reading this book. However, it might be better to start with reading "I, Robot"

Asimov's Caves of Steel is the first novel in his famous Robot series and takes place after I, Robot (a collection of short stories which I recommend reading first). The Caves of Steel takes place 1400 or so years in the future where human live under huge domes and live amongst robots of varying technological sophistication and ability. The story is a detective novel at heart and parallels the classic Sherlock and Holmes cannon in more ways than one.

Asimov does it all here and this is a rare literary example of a book covering numerous bases successfully. The crux of the novel is the relationship between detective Elijah Bailey and his advanced robot partner Daneel Olivaw. Elijah is distrusting of robots at heart while Daneel is the perfect foil as the human-like robot learning to interact within human society. Their relationship is complex as it is entertaining. Daneel plays the perfect Watson to Elijah's Sherlock while at the same time Elijah must grow as a person if he is to accept his robot partner and solve the murder mystery. Their interaction is touching, suspenseful and often times hilarious.

The actual murder mystery aspect of the book is top shelf as well. More than just a "whodunit?" the book ties political themes and introduces story arcs that tie the whole series as well. The universe Asimov creates is detailed, realistic and very well thought out from a physical and social perspective.

Finally like all great books, Caves of Steel and the rest of the Robot series touch upon important thematic elements that make the books relevant beyond their immediate initial publishing. Asimov was way ahead of his time and this series deals with alienation, racism and social awareness that really strikes home in today's troubled times.

In 2004 this book was nominated for the 1953 Retro Hugo award along with Childhood's End and Fahrenheit 451. Although in my opinion The Caves of Steel was superior to both of those books, it's hard to argue the cultural significance of Fahrenheit 451, 50 years after the fact and I don't have a problem with that choice.

Bottom Line: One of my favorite series of all time..nuff said!

I love Asimov's nonfiction, for its liveliness and practical explanations of the how and why of science. However, his fictional characters were almost always quite stilted. Here isn't an exception.

On the plus side, Asimov is fantastic as a mystery writer, and that's what this is. It's an unlocked room mystery, where any number of people or machines could be the culprit, and he does an excellent job of tying in evidence, false assumptions, attempts to mislead the investigation, friction between human and robot, rebellion both competent and pointless, and several interest groups.

It's a bit slow to start, but worth reading on for the puzzle to be solved, which turns out to be rather elegant in basis (as a successful crime should be), complicated by culture and technology, and finally resolved as a human issue.

However, it's not perfect, because the characters are rather stiff--no more so than in any of his other works, it's just his style--and the overarching plans of both the Spacers and Medievalists are treated somewhat simplistically and with a bit of handwaving. They really should either have been left out, or given more treatment.

The trichotomy between the casual yet distant culture of the Spacers, vs the rebellious naivete of the Medievalists, and the drab, depressing burden of the City dwellers is interesting and disturbing, though I feel the City culture is excessive in its communistic strata. I'm not sure I can accept the stability of it.

While this is mentioned as taking place thousands of years in the future, and the tech is dated now, only 50 years later, I won't consider that a flaw--books are written to meet the reader's expectations, and 50 years ago the science was considered rather far out. And since much of it does now exist, it shows the brilliance of Asimov's grasp of science. I rather think (from his nonfic) that he knew it wouldn't take long to happen, but was afraid of saying so to the typical reader of the day (whereas Heinlein did the reverse--extrapolated short term with greater magnitude and slightly lesser accuracy).

It's a great piece to study the history of SF, an entertaining story, and a relevant part of the background for the "I, Robot" movie. Certainly worth the read, and fun despite its imperfections.

Set on Earth in the distant future, "The Caves of Steel" is a science fiction detective novel. It is very possible that this is the first novel of its kind, and since Asimov can easily be considered the father of modern science fiction, I tend to believe that it is. The Earth is a very different place than it is today. Overpopulation has led to colonization of other planets and now the population of the Earth, where cities are covered in domes and the idea of being out in "fresh" air is frightening, is divided into two groups: the Earthbound city dwelling citizens, and the Spacers who live in their own separate dome and are from the colonized worlds. Distrust, misunderstanding, and fear between the two groups are very common though there is very little direct communication or interaction. When a Spacer is murdered in Spacetown and the only suspects are the city dwellers, New York Detective Elijah (Lije) Bailey is asked by his supervisor to investigate. But, there is a condition given by the Spacer government: the detective will be given a partner: R. Daneel Olivaw. The R in this instance stands for Robot. Bailey, like many earthlings, has an innate prejudice against Robots but is willing to work with R Daneel because that is his job and he follows orders.

With his job on the line and not truly knowing where or how to begin, Lije Bailey begins his investigation into the murder. He has to deal with his own prejudice as well as that of nearly every other human in the City, all the while figuring out how to solve the case himself but still work with his robot partner. While the detective story here is the main story, what is most interesting is the vision of the future imagined by Isaac Asimov, how robots could be created so lifelike and what sort of prejudice and fear that could cause. The story itself is kind of weak and not all that compelling. What makes "The Caves of Steel" so interesting is the ideas. The ideas about robots, the future, colonization, prejudice, and humanity are what allows this book to be better than just the story itself. I wanted to know more about everything else but the story, but the everything else kept me reading. Writing in the 1950's, Isaac Asimov seems to be a little off on some of his visions of the future, but as a whole this is an interesting novel. I still prefer "I, Robot" as it examines individual aspects of the evolution of robotics, but both are good novels to read. It may just seem a bit simple to today's reader, though.

-Joe Sherry

Ah, Asimov. There's something terribly cozy about his fiction. Even when it's a work that you haven't read before, there are always a few touchstones to make any story seem familiar. With almost any other author, this would be a criticism, but this isn't the case for Asimov. His body of work often overlapped, but he was talented enough never to make his stories seem repetitive.
THE CAVES OF STEEL almost feels like two different kinds of stories in one. In one sense, Asimov constructed a mystery novel within the trappings and conventions of the science-fiction genre. But he's also very interested in world-building. He goes to great lengths to describe what life will be like in his future. I was on a train from Connecticut to Maryland, and I was quite amused at passing through geographical locations that Asimov had futurized. New York becomes a gigantic enclosed City, and Asimov takes great care to describe what the layout will look like and what the transportation methods will be. New Jersey becomes a gigantic yeast farm, and I'll let readers of this review make their own New Jersey jokes at this time.
The main plot focuses on an unexplained murder, and Earth detective Lije Baley has been teamed with R. Daneel Olivaw, with the "R" standing for "Robot". Not only are anti-robot feelings running high on Earth, but there is also a lot of animosity between Earth and the colonies. So, the murder of an important "Spacer" attracts enough attention that the forces of both sides are brought together to discover the truth.
Creating fully fleshed out characters was not always Asimov's strongpoint, and many of the secondary people feel fairly flat. Fortunately, the two main detectives have been thought though fairly well. Of course, since one half of the team is robotic, Asimov was making things easier on himself since he did seem to enjoy creating robots as much as he enjoyed creating human characters. But the interplay between the Earther and the robot are just as good as anything Asimov wrote in I, ROBOT, or indeed, anything of his that I've read.
I read Asimov's final autobiography (he wrote three volumes over the years) a couple of years ago, and it's fascinating to see how much of himself he put in his stories. Asimov famously hated leaving his apartment, and was apparently uneasy about being in wide-open spaces. So it's not surprising to see that in the future of THE CAVES OF STEEL, mankind is overwhelmingly agoraphobic. When a robotics scientist is transported in to the story and gives a short lecture about how he hates flying, we know that this is Asimov himself expressing one of his own personality quirks. Little asides and pieces of dialog further this impression. When Baley delivers a speech about an Old Testament King, the tone is almost identical to that of some of Asimov's essays that deal with Biblical subjects.
Mystery and science fiction were the two fictional genres that I feel Asimov was the most successful at. Here, he combines these into one utterly engrossing story. The plot is a lot of fun, and so is the world-building that Asimov undertakes. But I think what I remember most about the book is the partnership of the two main characters. Having robots and humans intermingle is something that Asimov did quite a lot of in his novels and short stories, but I think the pairing in this book is probably one of his most successful. I already own the sequel to this book, THE NAKED SUN (yet another in my overflowing and increasing too-read pile), and I am already looking forward to being reunited with these two characters.

Take a complex scifi novel and meld it with a hardboiled mystery -- the result is "Caves of Steel." Isaac Asimov's most famous series continues with this book, a genre-bending trip into the future. Plenty of whodunnits and political tension, not to mention more robots.
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.
A must-read for fans of science fiction and mystery, but also an intriguing read for anyone, and a captivating book for those who enjoyed "I Robot."

3000 years into the future Earth is reaching the end of its rope in terms of how many human beings can reside on it. All of its inhabitants are crowded into supercities where privacy and personal space are long forgotten myths. Almost none of them can say they have ever seen the open sky before because of the domes that enclose them like prisons. All food is rationed. Adding to the tension of overpopulation, Spacers have arrived on Earth. Spacers are earthlings that left their planet a millenium before to colonize other planets with the help of robots. Their presence is not explained but the rumour is that the Spacers have come to take over and to gradually get rid of earth's inhabitants by replacing them with robot workers. A murder is committed in the Spacer city and Lije Baley is called in to solve the mystery and avert an intergalactic incident. The problem is that the Spacers want one of their own people to be his partner, and IT just happens to be a robot named R. Daneel Olivaw. Baley believes that if the robot solves the case first, then Baley, like all earthmen, will be replaced by the robot. This novel seems very prophetic now, even more so then when it came out in 1953. There have been many workers that have been put out of jobs by machines and there will be many more replaced by them in the decades to come. You can really identify with the Midievalists in the novel. These are radical groups of men and women who simply want to return to nature, the whole garden of eden scene where man works from the soil and is not reliant on technology. There's no real force for evil in the novel because everyone is shown to have a motive for what they are doing which gives it great depth. I thought that with its publication date Caves of Steel would be hokey and dated but really the only thing dated about it was Baley's exclamation of the word "Jehosophat!" whenever he needed to swear. One criticism I do have is that Baley seemed to be slightly unintelligent, almost. He very frequently comes to the wrong conclusions and looks like a total fool. But I guess in the end this just makes him more human. I enjoyed Caves and look forward to reading the second volume of the Robot series, The Naked Sun.

How well can we expect a 50-year-old book about the future to hold up? Not very well. But somehow Asimov has written Caves of Steel to last much longer than a normal sci-fi book's expiration date.

Centuries in the future the people of Earth are living in giant multi-layered cities, eating processed yeast and sharing everything from public transit to toilets. They cannot look each other in the eye and compete for higher "classifications" to get more privileges. Living their whole lives in an enclosed city of hundreds of millions, covered with story upon story of high efficiency apartment buildings and nuclear power plants Earthmen are now afraid of open skies and fields, and instead happily wallow in their "caves of steel".

Now here come the "Spacers" and their robots - inhabitants of technologically and socially advanced planets that were once Earth's colonies. And they have a plan for Earth - the home planet they now control with the threat of military power. How will our Earthman Elijah Bailey solve the unthinkable murder of a Spacer? And how will he feel about the Spacer's plot to use Earthmen in the creation of a whole new society - outside of their caves of steel?

Okay, the detective story is not that thrilling, but it's no less thrilling than a lot of other stuff hitting the market today. And ultimately the book is a statement about man's removal of himself from nature, not a who-dunnit, which I see as just a premise to wrap Asimov's vision of a future Earth around. And if his figures regarding over-population aren't completely accurate we can cut the man a little slack - that was 50 years ago! There is still a lot to get out of this novel - a sci-fi classic well worth reading.

Lije Baley, a plain-clothes cop in the steel-encased New York City has a murder mystery to solve. A prominent Spacer was murdered and unfortunately for Lije his partner is a robot, R. Daneel Olivaw. Lije doesn't like robots. Actually, most humans don't like robots. Robots can easily do the same jobs that humans can do and they don't require a paycheck.

Asimov really set the hook with Caves of Steel. I'm going through the whole Robot, Empire and Foundation saga and I'm doing it in the Asimov recommended reading order. I started with I, Robot which was an enjoyable read for sure, but Caves of Steel may be the book responsible for an Asimov-obsession. Asimov's prose is very accessible and his ideas are brilliant.

I will admit that Caves of Steel suffers from the same issue as I, Robot. Some of the plot devices are just a little too convenient. For example, it's all but impossible for humans to go outside because most humans suffer from agoraphobia. This is so, just to keep the mystery alive. There are other plot devices in the book that are similar. Still, this is a fine yarn that all fans of sci-fi should check out.

A good murder mystery, interesting plot. It is enjoyable to read as long as you keep in mind that it was published in 1954. Far in the future without cell phones, laptops, etc. Still, a fun book to read.

"The Caves of Steel" is another of Isaac Asimov's classic science fiction stories. In this one, he successfully blends science fiction with a detective novel. Teaming up New York City detective Lije Bailey and R(obot). Daneel Olivaw who represents the spacer interests in the investigation of the murder of a Spacer Ambassador (Roj Nemmenuh Sarton). For me, this is the earliest example of a great Asimov novel. There is no doubt that "I, Robot" and the Foundation novels are very good, but they are essentially collections of short stories which were turned into a novel. His other earlier novels, the precursor novels to the foundation series, simply aren't as good either scientifically or in terms of literature.

In re-reading this novel, it is amazing the job that Asimov does in conveying a complex social situation, such as the one which exists on Earth and between Earth and the Spacers, Earthmen and Robots, etc., without taking three or four chapters to discuss all the issues. The first chapter opens with the murder having already been committed, and Asimov adeptly provides in the telling of the story the Earth attitude towards robots as well as the attitude of Lije Bailey, as well as other key information about the society and the mystery as well.

Commissioner Enderby is a long time friend of Lije, and he selects him to team up with a robot (R. Daneel Olivaw) to solve the murder. There doesn't seem to be any easy answer. An Earthman is suspected as all the Spacers have undergone cerebroanalysis which has shown them incapable of Murder, (who was to have met with the murdered Spacer shortly after the body was discovered, and thus a suspect). But the only way an Earthman could do it would be to venture outside of the Caves of Steel, and Earthmen have become agoraphobic after living for so long in their protective cities.

The relationship between Lije and Daneel is at first very strained, though Daneel is apparently unaware of it Lije first concludes that Daneel is in fact the victim and that the crime was a fraud, and later he concludes that Daneel is the murderer, a robot without the first law. However, both of these theories prove embarrassingly wrong. At the same time, Lije has started to rely on Daneel's abilities, though he seems unaware of just how much help he is getting from his partner.

Most of this book is very good, but there are some small problems which prevent me from giving it five stars. It bothered me quite a bit that both Lije and Daneel mention that Lije accused Daneel of murder twice, when in actuality the first time it was not an accusation of murder, but rather that Daneel was in fact the supposed victim. One has to wonder if Asimov changed the nature of the accusation at some point and then forgot to go back and edit this section. It also bothers me from a technical standpoint that on the one hand it is made clear how Daneel appears human enough to fool any non-robotic human, and yet when discussing noticeable differences there are some key areas, such as emotions and eating, where people would obviously notice that something was different about Daneel. There are also some gaps in knowledge which one would expect that Daneel would have been given, but those might be explained by the back story of his having been rushed into use as a result of the murder.

Overall though, those problems don't detract much from what is a very successful marriage of science fiction and mystery. This book was first published in serial form in "Galaxy Magazine", from October through December of 1953 and then published in book form in 1954 by Doubleday. It was nominated for the Retro Hugo in 2004 for novels first published in 1953, and of course it led to the sequel "The Naked Sun" in 1956, and then much later additional works as well as Asimov merged his Robot and Foundation universes. The addition which I read also includes a nice introduction by Isaac Asimov in which he discusses the history of his robot stories.

In a world where most humans live in vast enclosed cities, never seeing the naked sky, Elijah Bailey is a homicide detective assigned to an unusual case. A murder has occurred in the "spacer city". Spacers are earth-men who colonized the stars generations before, and went on to achieve technological advantages, mainly through the use of Earth-shunned robotics, that give them a serious edge on the mother planet. The murder itself is a seemingly impossible circumstance, which is a specialty of Asimov's mysteries. And Elijah must solve it with the help of a humaniform robot.

Asimov builds a likely sounding future society that is at once oddly familiar and totally different from our experiences, and ties it in with technologies and off-world humans who are interesting and complicated. Asimov was above all else a plot technician. Often his characters don't outshine other writers in raw emotion, but his stories are unrivaled for sensible, interesting plots with unexpected but highly believable and logical twists. The Caves of Steel is one such book. The emotions of Detective Bailey do come through as he faces his individual version of the society wide agoraphobia, but the focus is on the mystery and its accoutrements. As is all Asimov, The Caves of Steel is enjoyable, fascinating, and a fair mystery ... you have the clues at the same time the detectives do.

Another one of Asimov's five star novels! Caves of Steel has New York City 1000 years in the future as it's backdrop. This metropolis has expanded with its population explosion into the only available space - down into the depths of the Earth itself. The people of Earth live in constant fear of attacks from other colonized planets of humans. The polar opposites of the Earthmen and the Spacers exaggerate the effect of our world's resources on the most basic elements of life, itself. Our most basic of human needs such as privacy, space, food are altered like elements of an equation.
The book opens with a seedling community of Spacers rooted on Earth to provide Earthmen the chance at an introduction to the alternate culture. As one can guess, this does not produce the desired effect. Earthmen don't only fear Spacers; they are terrified of robots as well. Tensions hit a peak between cultures when a Spacer is murdered. Relations between the two cultures hang by a thread. The only hope at defusing the situation lies with Elijah Bailey, a detective from the Earthmen, and a Spacer named R. Daneel Olivaw racing to solve the crime before the hope of any harmony becomes completely unraveled. Are the two men as they seem? Can they be trusted? One thing is certain; this is not a normal murder.
What a thrilling book that incorporates mystery and suspense! Caves of Steel is a must read for both science fiction fans and mystery readers, alike. The twists and turns will captivate you. I highly recommend it.---Will

It's been many years since I read Asimov's Foundation (Foundation Novels), or any science fiction at all. Now, from my new perspective as a novelist myself, I see what I've been missing.

It's absolutely fascinating to watch Asimov create a world that never was, and even more so when he addresses the challenge of creating R. Daneel Olivaw, a quite believable and even sympathetic character who happens to be a robot.

He starts by introducing another robot, R. Sammy, who is far less "human" than R. Daneel. Then he shows in several scenes how robots are despised and feared by humans on Earth. Then Detective Elijah Baley makes it clear he does not want to partner with R. Daneel, but has no choice.

Only after all that is R. Daneel himself introduced.

R. Daneel soon shows he is no ordinary robot by taking the initiative to quell a disturbance in a shoe store, an achievement Baley reluctantly admits to himself was impressive. When Baley takes R. Daneel home, his wife Jesse is attracted to the "man" she does not know is a robot.

The shoe store incident and Jesse's reaction demonstrate that R. Daneel is close enough to human to fool other humans. R. Daneel then discloses to Baley that he is the first prototype of an advanced robot, more closely human, developed for the express purpose of interacting with humans to learn more about how humans think.

As the story progresses, the reader, along with Detective Baley, finds it increasingly easy to accept R. Daneel on his terms, within his limitations, and even to feel emotions for this constructed machine. A remarkable writing accomplishment by Asimov.

Written in 1953, and projecting 1000 years into the future, Asimov's description of New York City is fascinating, not so much for the technology, where his imagination has not approached even what we already know has come to pass, but in the evolving relationships between people, and more importantly, between people and their government. Here, one fears, Asimov's insights are too frighteningly accurate.

Having now published two novels --- A Good Conviction, a NYC-based legal thriller which tells the story of a young man wrongly imprisoned in Sing Sing for a murder he did not commit by a Manhattan ADA who may have known he was innocent ... and The Heretic (Library of American Fiction), a historical novel describing the persecution of a family of secret Jews by the Catholic Church on the eve of the Spanish Inquisition --- I have devised a self-education project to help me become more attuned to the techniques and styles of other authors, and thus (hopefully) become a better novelist myself.

"The Caves of Steel" is one of the novels I've read as part of this self-education project.

I'm organizing my thoughts into various categories relevant to writing, such as ... "beginnings" ... "conflict" ... "characters" ... and others, and I've posted my observations as a blog, which turns out to be a wonderful way for me to organize and retrieve my notes.

This also puts my thinking in the public domain. So if you'd like to see my evolving comments about writing novels, I invite you to take a look at my "Education of a Novelist" blog.

You can reach my blog by searching the web for "weinstein education of a novelist."

LEW WEINSTEIN

"Caves of Steel" is Asimov's second robot centered book. On the surface, we have a murder mystery which Elijah Baley is asked to investigate. Robot R. Daneel Olivaw is to accompany and help Baley. This mystery is quite good. I do suggest that reading "I, Robot" might be helpful for the reader's understanding of robot psychology. The resolution of the mystery is, also, good.

There is a second level to this and the following Elijah Baley stories. The 'spacers' have realized that their approach to colonizing the stars has serious problems (partly having to do with the use of robots), just as the 'earthmen' left behind have a nearly reciprocal problem (partly due to the total absence of robots). The spacers are hoping to find a third alternative to humankind's future (possibly androids such as R. Daneel may aid the third alternative) and believe that Baley's investigation(s) and his interaction with R. Daneel will provide some clues as to how to bring that third alternative to reality. This theme is in the background of each story, but is not actively in the foreground plot(s).

Why not rate this very good story even higher? Well, to me, Asimov has a stilted manner of writing and his stories can be somewhat wooden and lack a feeling of fidelity to human realities. His themes are, often, clearer than his story plots. In short, he is/was not as good a storyteller as I wish he were /had been.

I do recommend reading this book. However, it might be better to start with reading "I, Robot"

Asimov's Caves of Steel is the first novel in his famous Robot series and takes place after I, Robot (a collection of short stories which I recommend reading first). The Caves of Steel takes place 1400 or so years in the future where human live under huge domes and live amongst robots of varying technological sophistication and ability. The story is a detective novel at heart and parallels the classic Sherlock and Holmes cannon in more ways than one.

Asimov does it all here and this is a rare literary example of a book covering numerous bases successfully. The crux of the novel is the relationship between detective Elijah Bailey and his advanced robot partner Daneel Olivaw. Elijah is distrusting of robots at heart while Daneel is the perfect foil as the human-like robot learning to interact within human society. Their relationship is complex as it is entertaining. Daneel plays the perfect Watson to Elijah's Sherlock while at the same time Elijah must grow as a person if he is to accept his robot partner and solve the murder mystery. Their interaction is touching, suspenseful and often times hilarious.

The actual murder mystery aspect of the book is top shelf as well. More than just a "whodunit?" the book ties political themes and introduces story arcs that tie the whole series as well. The universe Asimov creates is detailed, realistic and very well thought out from a physical and social perspective.

Finally like all great books, Caves of Steel and the rest of the Robot series touch upon important thematic elements that make the books relevant beyond their immediate initial publishing. Asimov was way ahead of his time and this series deals with alienation, racism and social awareness that really strikes home in today's troubled times.

In 2004 this book was nominated for the 1953 Retro Hugo award along with Childhood's End and Fahrenheit 451. Although in my opinion The Caves of Steel was superior to both of those books, it's hard to argue the cultural significance of Fahrenheit 451, 50 years after the fact and I don't have a problem with that choice.

Bottom Line: One of my favorite series of all time..nuff said!

I love Asimov's nonfiction, for its liveliness and practical explanations of the how and why of science. However, his fictional characters were almost always quite stilted. Here isn't an exception.

On the plus side, Asimov is fantastic as a mystery writer, and that's what this is. It's an unlocked room mystery, where any number of people or machines could be the culprit, and he does an excellent job of tying in evidence, false assumptions, attempts to mislead the investigation, friction between human and robot, rebellion both competent and pointless, and several interest groups.

It's a bit slow to start, but worth reading on for the puzzle to be solved, which turns out to be rather elegant in basis (as a successful crime should be), complicated by culture and technology, and finally resolved as a human issue.

However, it's not perfect, because the characters are rather stiff--no more so than in any of his other works, it's just his style--and the overarching plans of both the Spacers and Medievalists are treated somewhat simplistically and with a bit of handwaving. They really should either have been left out, or given more treatment.

The trichotomy between the casual yet distant culture of the Spacers, vs the rebellious naivete of the Medievalists, and the drab, depressing burden of the City dwellers is interesting and disturbing, though I feel the City culture is excessive in its communistic strata. I'm not sure I can accept the stability of it.

While this is mentioned as taking place thousands of years in the future, and the tech is dated now, only 50 years later, I won't consider that a flaw--books are written to meet the reader's expectations, and 50 years ago the science was considered rather far out. And since much of it does now exist, it shows the brilliance of Asimov's grasp of science. I rather think (from his nonfic) that he knew it wouldn't take long to happen, but was afraid of saying so to the typical reader of the day (whereas Heinlein did the reverse--extrapolated short term with greater magnitude and slightly lesser accuracy).

It's a great piece to study the history of SF, an entertaining story, and a relevant part of the background for the "I, Robot" movie. Certainly worth the read, and fun despite its imperfections.

Set on Earth in the distant future, "The Caves of Steel" is a science fiction detective novel. It is very possible that this is the first novel of its kind, and since Asimov can easily be considered the father of modern science fiction, I tend to believe that it is. The Earth is a very different place than it is today. Overpopulation has led to colonization of other planets and now the population of the Earth, where cities are covered in domes and the idea of being out in "fresh" air is frightening, is divided into two groups: the Earthbound city dwelling citizens, and the Spacers who live in their own separate dome and are from the colonized worlds. Distrust, misunderstanding, and fear between the two groups are very common though there is very little direct communication or interaction. When a Spacer is murdered in Spacetown and the only suspects are the city dwellers, New York Detective Elijah (Lije) Bailey is asked by his supervisor to investigate. But, there is a condition given by the Spacer government: the detective will be given a partner: R. Daneel Olivaw. The R in this instance stands for Robot. Bailey, like many earthlings, has an innate prejudice against Robots but is willing to work with R Daneel because that is his job and he follows orders.

With his job on the line and not truly knowing where or how to begin, Lije Bailey begins his investigation into the murder. He has to deal with his own prejudice as well as that of nearly every other human in the City, all the while figuring out how to solve the case himself but still work with his robot partner. While the detective story here is the main story, what is most interesting is the vision of the future imagined by Isaac Asimov, how robots could be created so lifelike and what sort of prejudice and fear that could cause. The story itself is kind of weak and not all that compelling. What makes "The Caves of Steel" so interesting is the ideas. The ideas about robots, the future, colonization, prejudice, and humanity are what allows this book to be better than just the story itself. I wanted to know more about everything else but the story, but the everything else kept me reading. Writing in the 1950's, Isaac Asimov seems to be a little off on some of his visions of the future, but as a whole this is an interesting novel. I still prefer "I, Robot" as it examines individual aspects of the evolution of robotics, but both are good novels to read. It may just seem a bit simple to today's reader, though.

-Joe Sherry

Ah, Asimov. There's something terribly cozy about his fiction. Even when it's a work that you haven't read before, there are always a few touchstones to make any story seem familiar. With almost any other author, this would be a criticism, but this isn't the case for Asimov. His body of work often overlapped, but he was talented enough never to make his stories seem repetitive.
THE CAVES OF STEEL almost feels like two different kinds of stories in one. In one sense, Asimov constructed a mystery novel within the trappings and conventions of the science-fiction genre. But he's also very interested in world-building. He goes to great lengths to describe what life will be like in his future. I was on a train from Connecticut to Maryland, and I was quite amused at passing through geographical locations that Asimov had futurized. New York becomes a gigantic enclosed City, and Asimov takes great care to describe what the layout will look like and what the transportation methods will be. New Jersey becomes a gigantic yeast farm, and I'll let readers of this review make their own New Jersey jokes at this time.
The main plot focuses on an unexplained murder, and Earth detective Lije Baley has been teamed with R. Daneel Olivaw, with the "R" standing for "Robot". Not only are anti-robot feelings running high on Earth, but there is also a lot of animosity between Earth and the colonies. So, the murder of an important "Spacer" attracts enough attention that the forces of both sides are brought together to discover the truth.
Creating fully fleshed out characters was not always Asimov's strongpoint, and many of the secondary people feel fairly flat. Fortunately, the two main detectives have been thought though fairly well. Of course, since one half of the team is robotic, Asimov was making things easier on himself since he did seem to enjoy creating robots as much as he enjoyed creating human characters. But the interplay between the Earther and the robot are just as good as anything Asimov wrote in I, ROBOT, or indeed, anything of his that I've read.
I read Asimov's final autobiography (he wrote three volumes over the years) a couple of years ago, and it's fascinating to see how much of himself he put in his stories. Asimov famously hated leaving his apartment, and was apparently uneasy about being in wide-open spaces. So it's not surprising to see that in the future of THE CAVES OF STEEL, mankind is overwhelmingly agoraphobic. When a robotics scientist is transported in to the story and gives a short lecture about how he hates flying, we know that this is Asimov himself expressing one of his own personality quirks. Little asides and pieces of dialog further this impression. When Baley delivers a speech about an Old Testament King, the tone is almost identical to that of some of Asimov's essays that deal with Biblical subjects.
Mystery and science fiction were the two fictional genres that I feel Asimov was the most successful at. Here, he combines these into one utterly engrossing story. The plot is a lot of fun, and so is the world-building that Asimov undertakes. But I think what I remember most about the book is the partnership of the two main characters. Having robots and humans intermingle is something that Asimov did quite a lot of in his novels and short stories, but I think the pairing in this book is probably one of his most successful. I already own the sequel to this book, THE NAKED SUN (yet another in my overflowing and increasing too-read pile), and I am already looking forward to being reunited with these two characters.

Take a complex scifi novel and meld it with a hardboiled mystery -- the result is "Caves of Steel." Isaac Asimov's most famous series continues with this book, a genre-bending trip into the future. Plenty of whodunnits and political tension, not to mention more robots.
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.
A must-read for fans of science fiction and mystery, but also an intriguing read for anyone, and a captivating book for those who enjoyed "I Robot."

3000 years into the future Earth is reaching the end of its rope in terms of how many human beings can reside on it. All of its inhabitants are crowded into supercities where privacy and personal space are long forgotten myths. Almost none of them can say they have ever seen the open sky before because of the domes that enclose them like prisons. All food is rationed. Adding to the tension of overpopulation, Spacers have arrived on Earth. Spacers are earthlings that left their planet a millenium before to colonize other planets with the help of robots. Their presence is not explained but the rumour is that the Spacers have come to take over and to gradually get rid of earth's inhabitants by replacing them with robot workers. A murder is committed in the Spacer city and Lije Baley is called in to solve the mystery and avert an intergalactic incident. The problem is that the Spacers want one of their own people to be his partner, and IT just happens to be a robot named R. Daneel Olivaw. Baley believes that if the robot solves the case first, then Baley, like all earthmen, will be replaced by the robot. This novel seems very prophetic now, even more so then when it came out in 1953. There have been many workers that have been put out of jobs by machines and there will be many more replaced by them in the decades to come. You can really identify with the Midievalists in the novel. These are radical groups of men and women who simply want to return to nature, the whole garden of eden scene where man works from the soil and is not reliant on technology. There's no real force for evil in the novel because everyone is shown to have a motive for what they are doing which gives it great depth. I thought that with its publication date Caves of Steel would be hokey and dated but really the only thing dated about it was Baley's exclamation of the word "Jehosophat!" whenever he needed to swear. One criticism I do have is that Baley seemed to be slightly unintelligent, almost. He very frequently comes to the wrong conclusions and looks like a total fool. But I guess in the end this just makes him more human. I enjoyed Caves and look forward to reading the second volume of the Robot series, The Naked Sun.

How well can we expect a 50-year-old book about the future to hold up? Not very well. But somehow Asimov has written Caves of Steel to last much longer than a normal sci-fi book's expiration date.

Centuries in the future the people of Earth are living in giant multi-layered cities, eating processed yeast and sharing everything from public transit to toilets. They cannot look each other in the eye and compete for higher "classifications" to get more privileges. Living their whole lives in an enclosed city of hundreds of millions, covered with story upon story of high efficiency apartment buildings and nuclear power plants Earthmen are now afraid of open skies and fields, and instead happily wallow in their "caves of steel".

Now here come the "Spacers" and their robots - inhabitants of technologically and socially advanced planets that were once Earth's colonies. And they have a plan for Earth - the home planet they now control with the threat of military power. How will our Earthman Elijah Bailey solve the unthinkable murder of a Spacer? And how will he feel about the Spacer's plot to use Earthmen in the creation of a whole new society - outside of their caves of steel?

Okay, the detective story is not that thrilling, but it's no less thrilling than a lot of other stuff hitting the market today. And ultimately the book is a statement about man's removal of himself from nature, not a who-dunnit, which I see as just a premise to wrap Asimov's vision of a future Earth around. And if his figures regarding over-population aren't completely accurate we can cut the man a little slack - that was 50 years ago! There is still a lot to get out of this novel - a sci-fi classic well worth reading.

Lije Baley, a plain-clothes cop in the steel-encased New York City has a murder mystery to solve. A prominent Spacer was murdered and unfortunately for Lije his partner is a robot, R. Daneel Olivaw. Lije doesn't like robots. Actually, most humans don't like robots. Robots can easily do the same jobs that humans can do and they don't require a paycheck.

Asimov really set the hook with Caves of Steel. I'm going through the whole Robot, Empire and Foundation saga and I'm doing it in the Asimov recommended reading order. I started with I, Robot which was an enjoyable read for sure, but Caves of Steel may be the book responsible for an Asimov-obsession. Asimov's prose is very accessible and his ideas are brilliant.

I will admit that Caves of Steel suffers from the same issue as I, Robot. Some of the plot devices are just a little too convenient. For example, it's all but impossible for humans to go outside because most humans suffer from agoraphobia. This is so, just to keep the mystery alive. There are other plot devices in the book that are similar. Still, this is a fine yarn that all fans of sci-fi should check out.

I read this as a kid so my memory of it may be coloured but it was great. In this Asimov we meet detective Elijah Bailey for the first time. We also meet the kind of world he's living in - one where a lack of resources and overpopulation has meant that the government controls a great deal of aspects of people's lives including jobs, food rations etc. It also means that the major cities (including New York where this is set) are covered by a dome - the modern man and woman are never "outdoors" as such and being outdoors has become a taboo or some kind of universal phobia. There are also Spacers who broke away from this kind of constrained society a while ago to colonize other world. Relations are strained between the two groups.

The book is the case of the murder of one spacer - an important scientist. Bailey, in his investigations, gets an unusual partner - Daniel, a robot who was designed by the vic, looks exactly like him and is the latest in advanced spacer robot construction technology. Alongside the detective story (which by itself wouldn't have been that great), Daniel learns about Bailey's world, and its absurdities, while Elijah contemplates what it means to be an earth human/spacer/robot.

Overall, I found this entertaining and thoughtprovoking which I think are the two cornerstones of good sci-fi.

One of Asimov's best. It's a shame that the movie I-Robot was actually a mash up of this novel and the book I-Robot when it should just have been a movie interpretation of this. That's how ahead of his time Asimov was, his books describe a very possible future and they still manage to have that thinking man's action movie vibe to them. A sci-fi classic.

Some of the stories in THE COMPLETE ROBOT indicate the beginning of galactic civilization with the concept of hyperspace, but this novel shows the beginning of Earth's expansion into the galaxy.
However, that is only one of the factors in this science fiction/mystery novel. It works well on both levels. I've seen some criticism of the mystery elements, but with careful reading, the seasoned mystery reader will spot the necessary clues leading to the conclusion.
The basic plot involves New York City detective Elijah Bailey's teaming with R. Daneel Olivaw, a spacer android, to solve the murder of a prominent spacer scientist. Earth's population is, as a whole, fearful of the growing use of robots. There's a combination of distrust of the robots and fear of robots taking over even complex jobs on an overcrowded Earth, and the police detective himself resents having to work with a non-human. Naturally, this changes in time as the two work together to solve the crime and as Bailey learns of the outer worlds' objective of inspiring Earth's participation in colonizing other worlds.
As a whole, the story is well plotted and should encourage those new to Asimov to continue reading the robot series and then the Empire and Foundation books.

I guess in some sense the series is started with the I, Robot short stories, though this is the first of the Robot Novels and brings the (soon to be) famous R Daneel Olivaw into the picture, in addition to Bailey, whose name becomes large enough to be referenced in the Foundation works. The book itself is classic Asimov, and stands in there as a great Sci Fi novel in itself and part of the greater whole. While I'm not going to say it's as classic as some of the other work of the time, it does set the stage for some solid speculative fiction both on the pages and in your own head, which is always a great accomplishment for an author. Where the Foundation books are more of a far, far distant future of stories, the Robot novels give you something very tangible to think about as it pertains to the world now.

Some of the basic ideas are put forth in this novel which will pop up again and again in future books, both in the Robot and Foundation series'. Well worth the read, and short enough to knock this out in 2 days time.

John W. Campbell, Jr., famously said that the two genres of detective fiction and SF couldn't be combined. He was mistaken, as Isaac Asimov eventually demonstrated for another publisher (Horace Gold at _Galaxy_) with this fine work.
Building on his robot stories, Asimov here introduces two of his most memorable characters: detectives Elijah Baley (a human) and R. Daneel Olivaw (a robot). In Asimov's later work, these two are going to go down in galactic history. Here, they're just solving a mystery.
The tale opens in a future version of New York, but despite some nods toward the "hard-boiled" genre, Asimov actually owes more to Dame Agatha Christie than to Mickey Spillane. At any rate I won't spoil it for you by telling you any more about it.
The main reason I'm reviewing it now, in fact, is to recommend it to readers of Richard K. Morgan's brilliant _Altered Carbon_. There's a very short line of "mystery SF", running through Larry Niven's ARM stories; it starts here. If you're at all interested in this genre, this is one you'll want to read.
The two sequels (_The Naked Sun_ and _The Robots of Dawn_) are excellent as well. And of course any reader of Asimov's later works knows what eventually became of R. Daneel Olivaw.

The Caves of Steel is an incredible science fiction novel that work on two levels. Although it is deeply enmeshed in Asimov's robot universe, and has many of its inherent SF trappings, it is, at its heart, a murder mystery. For this reason, I think it can be enjoyed by science fiction fans and non-science fiction fans alike. It is very, very tightly written, quite suspenseful, and will keep you reading (and guessing) right up until the end. A true page-turner. That said, the novel, despite its brevity, probes quite well into some very deep issues. Baley and his relationship with his robot partner is quite a fascinating study: one watches his strong initial prejudice melt away as the book goes along, which makes for quite a statement on ethical relativism and cultural bias. Asimov also manages to bring up that oft-asked science fiction question: just what, exactly, does it mean to be human? On top of all this, the book features some quite philosophical aspects and several near-poetic bursts of dialogue that shows Asimov, like all good science fiction writers, did some good, hard thinking and extrapolation on where humanity may be heading in the future. He senses some real dangers (overpopulation, a dependence on technology, cities getting too big) and shows us the warning signs. The whole book is very well-written and described, and Asimov managed to build up quite a universe in it - the book has a very film noir aspect to it, and was obviously a big influence on subsequent writings by many different authors. Readers get the best of both worlds with an exquisite murder mystery, along with many other deeper issues examined that one would not normally find in a mere mystery story. An essential science fiction read, and a masterpiece.

Asimov, one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time, shows a world of the future filled with political and technological conflicts between earthlings and the Spacers - people from outside planets.
This book works in two ways. It gives an excellent picture of the future, while also presenting a great murder mystery. From pedestrian highways, planet colonies, robot-human conflict, to over-population, the future is presented in a way that relates to modern society and modern problems. This gives the reader a greater understanding of the setting compared to most other books.
The mystery itself is also very intriguing. Who killed the Spacer? Would the human looking robot be accepted by his partner? What were the political ramifications of this murder? All these problems become apparent throughout this book, and makes the book even more interesting as you read along.
I highly recommend this book, as it is one Asimov's finest.

"The Caves of Steel" is a wonderful beginning to an awesome science fiction series involving Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw. This is the story of an agoraphobic (afraid of open places) plainclothes cop Elijah Baley, accustomed to living inside the large cities of future Earth, teaming up with technological masterpiece R. Daneel Olivaw to solve a murder in the nearby Spacer community. Daneel, a relatively new creation, learns about human behavior from his robot prejudice partner and restricted in his behavior by what is known as the Laws of Robotics. People of earth, also agoraphobic, will challenge the solution for the case from many angles because of their social limitations. The murder case is exciting to follow especially given the interaction between Elijah and Daneel.
Thank you.

I loved the superb logic puzzle, which all great mysteries have. It was also presented the evolution of humanity in an interesting light, particularly the agoraphobic and social aspects. If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy Cognition Chronicles: The Redstone Legacy

The only reason I've rated this book only four stars is because some of Asimov's later books in the same series, written later in his career (Naked Sun, Robots of Dawn) get even better. However, this is where you need to begin--don't jump ahead. This is a thought-provoking and entertaining read in its own right.
Asimov combines the mystery genre and many of his futurist ideas together in this series. You'll enter a world where people live underground because there isn't enough living space, and where many people have grown resentful of robots that are taking over jobs that humans once held. Not only do you get to experience a great mystery-adventure, but you're also exploring the social consequences of near-human robots and the continued urbanization of the Earth.
Daneel Olivaw, the robot partner to detective Elijah Baley, is one of the most memorable characters in the field of speculative fiction.
This is the best place to start reading Asimov. If you enjoy this, you will absolutely love the sequels. After reading the Robots books, try the Foundation series, which starts slower but gets very good--and ultimately rewards readers of the Robot books by tieing it all together.

This is one of the best science fiction novels because all of the elements re-inforce each other. They mystery is interesting in itself but also gives a pretext for describing a vast future metropolis, from the "yeast farms" to the transportation system. The characters have been molded by their environment: they have a phobia for going outside the crowded city, and they have developed intricate social customs to avoid tripping over each other all the time. Asimov also comes up with a plausible reason as to why a single murder could have interstellar repercussions. Best of all, he avoided making his hero the macho type that runs around with blasters blazing: Baley has his quirks, but he THINKS his way to the solution.

I have to agree with other three star reviewers - this is not a very well written story. I have been reading Asimov for forty years and as a youngster I saw no fault, but as a mature adult his characters do not read well fifty years later, especially in this book. So for Asimov devotees and the robot novel fans, then it's must read I suppose, but as a good, well written story with fully fleshed characters, not so much. Also, I'd like to point out what others have not mentioned - the very poor way Asimov treats the single female character in this book. Asimov has never dealt with women in any of his books in a realistic way. He did get marginally better over the years, however in Caves, Jessie is treated as if she were an emotional idiot rather than a grown woman married to a high-ranking detective. Maybe it's the way women were expected to behave in mid-fifties (hysterical, illogical, somewhat dumb), but for modern readers it's an insult to the female gender.

The first of the Elijah Baley trilogy, in which New York City detective Lije Baley must deal with the culture of the spacers -- humans whose ancestors abandoned earth to form a galactic empire, who have become much more powerful than the crowded millions who remain on Earth. A spacer has been killed on Earth, and Baley must cooperate with the spacers' robot detective, R. Daneel Olivaw. The characters (even the robot's) are engaging, and the world that Asimov creates is fascinating.

Aside from being a fun science fiction slueth story, Caves of Steel presents an incredible picture of human society as it may come to us in the future. I found that this aspect of the book-- depicting how people will react to the advent of robots on the commercial scene as well as what happens to people in general(their dislike of open spaces and uncontrolled elements)-- was just as interesting if not more so than the storyline. Certainly it is more to Asimov's credit that he could write this sort of novel with such an insightful vision of the future than it would be if he just polluted the book market with yet another good mystery novel. I tend to favor the Grandmaster's older fiction more than his newer, except in the case of Foundation's Edge, which I found to be a fantastic book.

This is one of the few science fiction books I've read, and I only decided to do so after it was the selected read for a book group on another Web site. To my surprise, I enjoyed the novel immensely.

In a futuristic, severely over-populated New York City, a rigid class system dictates how and where people may dine and bathe, the city is built-up to such an extent that people never go outside, and humans' relationships with those from other planets ("Spacers") and robots are strained.

Since humans resist robot technology and are seen as inferior by "Spacers," Elijah Baley is presented with a unique set of challenges when he is partnered with robot R. Daneel to solve the murder of a high-ranking "Spacer." Baley's career and the well-being of his family are at stake as he and R. Daneel rush to solve the crime.

As others mentioned, the book does show its age and has some religious undertones that don't always seem to fit into the story. As someone who is new to the genre, however, I enjoyed reading about the world Asimov created, and the mystery kept me guessing. For some reason, I was expecting the book to be dry, but I found it to be a fun read!

One of my favourite series of any type. Asimov's earlier books (his later ones are dull and full of padding) were always short (about 200 pages) and didn't have any filling. The characters aren't drawn in depth but his books are easy to read and when you know what to expect you'll find his books very entertaining. Another reviewer called this book shallow and only worth reading on the beach, but what's wrong with that? Not all of us have the luxury of a quiet environment in which to read (try having kids) and we have to leave the likes of Dickens and Hardy until our later years!!
Buy it! You won't be sorry!

I had read the book over 40 years ago, but didn't remember the details. New readers might find it a little dated. Still, it's by ISAAC ASIMOV! Only the greatest influence on science fiction in the history of science fiction.

The positronic brain is the new disruption of the earth. People have lost their jobs, and now, Elijah Baley is paired up with R. Daneel Olivaw. (R. for robot.) It is a book of where Elijah does not trust his partner, but little does he no that Daneel will turn out to be his best friend...
If you read this one, ya gotta read them all!
They pull you in and you digest it as well as Daneel digests food!
(You have to read the book to find out what that means!)
I'ts One Of The Best Asimov's I've Read!
I loved it, and hopefully you will too!

I enjoyed reading Caves of Steel. After I finish the book I'm reading now I will buy the next Isaac Asimov book. Normally I'm not much of a reader but after reading Caves of Steel I'm energized about reading again. I just hope this continues as I'm really enjoying reading again!
Jon

Let me confess up front, Asimov's craft occasionally leaves me wondering why I invest the time. The first several chapters brought a sense of deja vu as I struggled to understand the direction this book was headed. Set up as a murder mystery a thousand years in the future, there seemed to be no investigative movement. No examination of relevant facts, clues or even a satisfactory description of the crime scene. More emphasis is placed on the politics of the futuristic society and an invective against prejudice. Well into the story, I began to care about a satisfactory outcome and even felt compassion for the detective's robot partner. The last half of the book was a page turner.

Asimov's wonderful mystery/science fiction novel that sets the stage for his whole robot series has a good mystery plot. The whole book's setting, however, is in some ways more interesting. The idea of a future Earth as being a few huge cities with tens of millions of people who have never seen the light of day is disturbing and thought-provoking. Though the mystery is not extrodinarily complex, it is interesting when put together with the setting which makes the book even more interesting. I highly recommend this book.

I started reading Isaac Asimov when I was eight years old (mostly because my father enjoyed the books). Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun are both books everyone should read. They are Sci Fi , mysteries, and detective stories all rolled into two books. I rate them each as most excellent. As you probably know, Asimov also wrote "I,Robot"....another excellent one.
I will continue to re-read these two over the years and with greatest enjoyment.
Frances J. Jessup, eclectic reader

One of the classics of Science Fiction, this book has lost nothing in the years since it was written. The second book in Asimov's 15 volumes of the history of the Galactic Empire, and the first in the 'Robot Novel' series, it's a must read.

This book merges 2 of my favourite genres- Scifi and detective.

Earth is in a bad state. Most humans are just scraping through. A few humans moved to the space, and these spacers have the real power now. They are rich and powerful, and the humans hate them. So when one of the spacers is murdered, there is threat of a war, and a detective must solve the case before Earth is invaded.

The title of the book refers to the fact that most humans(in the future) live in caves of steel-they work in huge metal factories, live in closed homes; they have no idea what goes on in the world outside. Since this is Asimov, he uses this metaphor to explore mankind's destiny, and the fact that we must struggle mediocrity and rise to greatness.

But don't let the philosophy distract you; this is an entertaining book on its own.

Asimov could not have foreseen everything about the future when he wrote this, but did an amazing job predicting technologies we have today that were dreams 60 years ago. Even so, some of the obsolescent things like wire recordings that didn't survive the '50s add a quaint amusement nonetheless. I've been reading his books in a mostly chronological sequence and you can see the young Asimov's storytelling skills and style growing.

This is one of the seminal novels in Asimov's massive, disorganized (in my view), and self-contadictory history of the future. It all started with the Foundation Trilogy, which is one of the greatest works of the golden age of scifi, but it continued far too long, perhaps in part to the brute necessity of making a living as a writer. Asimov had a massive ego and wrote too much too fast, but when he is good, he is very good.

This book pales in comparison to the FTrilogy, but it is OK. Good story, seminal characters that re-appear later and then much later. If you are an Asimov devotee, this is a must read, second only to FTrilogy. But if you are a hard scifi fan, seeking great scifi, this is mediocre at best.

Tepidly recommended.

This book introduces two of Isaac Asimov's most famous chacters; Lije Bailey, and Robot Daneel Olivaw.

Lije Bailey is a detective in New York, a New York that has moved underground to support its exploding population. The city has become agoraphobic and robot-phobic.

An important "spacer" (otherworld colonist) is murdered, and a robot is assigned to Lije to help crack the case.

Highly recommended.

I loved this book as a teenager in the 70s. I still think it should have been turned into a movie back then. I recently reread it (in 2006) and I was dissapointed. It hasn't aged well. Part of it is the science fiction, which seems especially dated, but mostly it's that the story and character development seemed ham fisted.

What bugged me the most was how poor a detective Lije Bailey was. It wasn't his powers of deduction as much as his deus ex machina behavior that dragged the plot out.

(I think I need to stop rereading Asimov before I become gravely dissapointed with all my memories.)

While _The Naked Sun_ is probably just a bit better, this book is nearly as good, and is vital when following the Robot Saga. Asimov is at his best here, and his portrayals of both characters and settings are marvelous and precise. This gives both a slightly bleak look at the future, but also a very hopeful one, as humans are asserted as being smart, worthwhile, and able to accomplish great things.

A good surprising ending, like any good mystery, and lots of good sci-fi in between.

This was the first Asimov book I was introduced too, and it is the one that got me hooked. (As of this writing, I just finished Robots and Empire.) The Caves of Steel combines great science fiction, and good mystery. The relationship between Baley and Daneel is fascinating, in that Baley hates robots, and by the end of the book, accepts Daneel. The backdrop is interesting and thought-provoking. Will Earth get as populated as Asimov writes? Anyway, the only aspect that could have been better was the mystery aspect. You can and can not solve it: meaning, the murderer is apparent, but the method is unknown (and ingenious.) If Asimov added a few more suspects, I would have been completely baffed. Well, to sum up, read this book, and continue it with The Naked Sun!

Characters who become central to the robot and foundation stories in asimov's final novels are here painted so vividly in a reasonably tightly written quick read novel.

Quaint whodunit with plenty of future features. I'm going for the sequel.

Simultaneously fun and thought-provoking. The futuristic world Asimov creates here is a bit dated (robots can be made indistinguishable from humans, but the concept of a mobile phone does not seem to exist), but the more serious issues he deals with have not gone out of style. The mystery involved is a page-turner.

I started these books because of paul krugman's championing of the foundation series -- I just wanted to start at the beginning. Truth is, i liked robots a lot more than foundation. it turns out krugman and i don't have the same taste in sci fi. i would only really read the whole asimov if you're interested in the history of sci fi.

This is my second Asimov novel. I hope this is not his best work because it was somewhat lame as sci-fi and as a mystery. As a mystery, a third grader should be able to figure out "who done it" by the end of the first chapter. I was drawn to the book as sci-fi having no idea what to expect. I was attracted by a futuristic police detective being paired with a robot that looked like the man who was murdered.
You don't have to know much about police work to determine that Asimov knew nothing about police work. Apparently, he was under the impression that a police officer points a gun at someone and barks orders to get what he wants. There is no clear purpose or method to what Lije Baley is investigating. The science of today was clearly beyond Asimov's imagination of the 1950's. He's apocalyptic description of an overpopulated earth of 8 billion people was way off and his predictions of space exploration, colonization, and the state of robotics was way off.
But still, this was a compelling book and a good read. Though some of the logic was fuzzy and I would expect more from a robot, this book was entertaining and I will read the other robot novels.

This was my first Asimov book and I am already impressed with the clarity of his writing. The characters are well defined and the deeper meaning of the novel is quite evident in only a few pages. There is a struggle between the humans and robots, which the characters must come to terms with before they can cooperate with each other. Quite enjoyable, with a few moments of humor.
Word_Ninja

Asimov had a lot of great ideas and his short stories are great, but his longer works just don't appeal to me. This particular book is quite dated and tedious to read. It's like the 1940-1950 family & social constructs were plopped down several millennium hence with little change. I think some of the elements of the book were incorporated into the movie I, Robot. - Cop, who doesn't like robots, has to investigate the death of a robotics scientist.

We robots are pleased by the continuing success of this classic detective story. Yes, pitiful humans, it is a murder mystery, and although your puny minds are given the clues you will be unable to see the truth. Dr Asimov has attempted and succeeded at the hardest form of the genre; a science-fiction mystery. We computers salute him; he was like one of us. R. Daneel Olivaw is a great character, and even Lije Bailey has his human moments.

I guess I'm in the minority here, but I didn't care for this book. This was my first Isaac Asimov book. I really wanted to like it. I know Asimov is basically a founding father of science fiction but I just didn't like this book. Part of it is that it's 60 years old and it reads that way....every use of the word "jehoshaphat" made me want to rip the book in half. In a future thousands of years from now, why would anyone be using a word as stupid as that? It's like thinking people will be saying "Yolo" or some other idiot slang/modern culture word. I thought the story was really slow to start and the characters were all boring. There wasn't much to the murder-mystery part of the story. I probably will not read the rest of the books in the Caves of Steel series. I might give Foundation a shot, just to see if it's any better.

In the middle of my seventh reading of the series, I would have to pick this as the best book of the bunch!
Stands by itself as a great novel, but best to read one book after the other. You won't be able to put any of them down! (except Forward the Foundation gets a bit slow at times; make sure you read the first section of Foundation before you read the last section of Forward).

I have read, in greater or lesser detail, most of the reviews of this book. That there are so many testifies to its popularity, although most people find something to complain about in it. The plot is weak, the characterization feeble, it was written too fast, the mystery wouldn't fool anyone with half a brain, and so on.

Asimov was not the greatest writer of all time, but he had a cunning brain. He was also able to think up an idea and put a novel twist on it. Read his short crime stories to see this. They are just puzzles with initial conditions, a method of operation, then a solution that follows the strictest line of reasoning.

This book is a typical Victorian murder story. All the conditions are given: they are precise, and are solved using clean logic by a brain that has no intrinsic humanity; that is Daneel, or Sherlock Holmes as we would call him. Assisted and hindered at all times by a man typical of the world he lives in.

Steeped in the dubious morals produced by his society, but fundamentally sound, Lije, or Dr Watson, would get nowhere without his poweful mentor; but Daneel would never even get started without Dr Watson to bridge the gap for him between his own superior intellect and these poor, nearly blind creatures that make up the human race.

Consider, read and enjoy.

This is a real breakthru work. Written in the mid-fifties, it still stands up well. Very interesting main characters - Elijah and Daneel... it is a quick and fun read... of the hundreds of SciFi books I've read, I'd have to say that this is my favorite. The followup book The Naked Sun, is also top-notch work.

This was a delightful book and it, along with The Naked Sun, are good reads today, and splendid examples of the beginning of modern science fiction. Asimov is good--the story will ring as true today as it did decades ago when it was written. I bought them not long ago, having read that they were his first Robot novels, and I loved them.

You will surprise how logical those robot stories go. The ending is very surprising but in the logical sense it is not strange at all. The logic makes everything possible! If you like thriller and sci-fi just try this and satisfaction is guaranteed. Also this book gives the sense how the Earth has changed and caused the later consequences, which are shown in other books. You will enjoy the style, storyline, the characters and everything in the book!

Incredible, insightful, Asimov is truly an innovative author. Despite its age, Caves of Steel remains relevant and plausible, showing us that even though we've advanced technologically, there are fundamental questions we continue to ask when formulating new ideology of A.I.

A fictional cop usually will get the partner that annoys him the most, to start with.

At least here, the detective type gets to work with a robot, not Eddie Murphy. Not everyone is a big fan of the robot, as it looks like they will replace people's jobs.

This ill-matched dueo has to investigate the murder of a prominent citizen of one of the colonized Spacer worlds.

this book was well-rounded good entertainment with a lil' science on the side which is always nice. It combines mystery, imagination, and intelligence into a real good book. It takes place thousands of years from now and creates a pretty interesting, but sad, world. good stuff.

I really enjoyed this book. This book is sci-fi mixed with mystery. It has social and possible future conflict as well. It has something for everyone. I recommend this book to anyone one who likes fiction and to Asimov fans, it is a must read.

I'm taking a walk down memory lane and re-reading the Robot/Foundation series. Using the I.A. website, I'm reading in story chronological order. Even this time through, I'm need to stick to a reading schedule, otherwise, I lose track of eat, sleep, and family time!

Never out of date in my singular opinion.

Whether or not you're a fan of Science Fiction or Isaac Asimov, this book is a must read. It is one of the greatest mysteries I have ever read. By the end of the book, every character has been accused of committing the crime even though they could not have. It will throw you through loop after loop, wondering where the ground is, and then it will assure you it was right under your feet the whole time. A MASTERPIECE.

Asimov tells a futuristic detective story rife with examples of human foibles, both strengths and weaknesses. He brilliantly creates a potent of a plausible future. If you like true science fiction, then you'll really like Robot Daneel and Detective Lije Baley's murder investigation through its twist and turns.

After reading the Foundation series, I found that I was missing something: something about a story of a robot and earth. This novel, though short, is a mystery about a murder, but with ideas throughout and such potential for future writings I'm ready to read the next one.
If you enjoy Sci-Fi: read it. Suggested that you read I, Robot first, but definitely not required.

This is chronologically the first book in Isaac Asimov's Galactic series. If you are interested in the Foundation or Empire series, you should definetly read this book and the rest of the Robot Series. They are all great books and provide important background for Asimov's future novels. The events in this book do not have as big an effect on history as some of the later books in this series but it is still a great book and a must read for any Asimov fan.

This book is incredible in that it can be entertaining on so many levels. It delves into a science fiction/murder mystery and still manages to establish two of the most enjoyable characters that asimov ever created. The characxter development is incredible and as it also starts Asimov's Robot mystery series, I recomend this book to all fans of Science fiction, or mysteries.

In his usual manner, Dr.Asimov has given the world of Science Fiction one of its enduring classics. Precursor to his classic Empire and Foundation novels, The Caves of Steel is an excellent murder mystery, as well as an exploration of an agoraphobic future earth. I trust that no one will figure out the mystery beforehand. Another of Asimov's best.

This is an excellent book, from beginning to end. This is probably the best sci-fi book I have read so far. This book is well written with things i barely understand, such as a positronic brain. If you enjoy mysteries you can only guess at, this is also a VERY good book! I think this "The Caves of Steel" deserves the 5 stars!

I'm not a fan of the books about robots, but this excellent futuristic detective novel has made me a fan of Isaac Asimov. There are intrigating riddles, a nice plot and, so common to the writer, a totally surprising end.

This was my way in to Asimov.
I found it a very entertaining, fluently written sci-fi adventure, with some interesting ideas thrown in. Lots of up to date ideas which is impressive considering when it was written. Highly recommended.

An investigation of future biases and "racism" in the far distant future. Not a bad prediction considering when the book was written. The characters were well thought out but very melodramatic at times. Clues were sprinkled around the entire story with a satisfying Law and Order twist in the end. Not my favorite Asimov, but still enjoyable.

Keep in mind that Asimov wrote this more than 40 years ago. He was fairly young when he started writing. This is G-rated material and shows a certain innocence. At any rate, this book still seems technically viable despite today's more advance technology. Read the next two books in the trilogy for ways in which the parallels between when he wrote the books and now.

A compact story with a good storyline. I am an occasional Sci-fi reader and this is one of the best stories that dont require you to read 6-8 books in a series(which usually peter out before you get to the end). I understand that this is part of a series, but is also a good stand alone.

I am a long time Asimov fan and i totally loved reading the entire Robot series by my favortie author. So that being said, my rating on this is not reflective of the story or author in any way. I have tried 3 times now to listen to this beautifully packaged masterpiece and have still not been able to get past half of the first chapter...All because of the horrible narrative job of William Dufris!!!

He totally lacks the talent to be able to deliver this exciting novel in the way it was written. I dont think i've ever heard a reading this bad! So again, great Author, great Novel, great series, and even packaging. Terribly done narration!

Some examples of great narration that i've heard for audiobooks are "The Talisman" by Stephen King and the "Icewind Dale Trilogy" by RA Salvatore. Great talents!!

This one....noooo!

A compact story with a good storyline. I am an occasional Sci-fi reader and this is one of the best stories that dont require you to read 6-8 books in a series(which usually peter out before you get to the end). I understand that this is part of a series, but is also a good stand alone.

I am a long time Asimov fan and i totally loved reading the entire Robot series by my favortie author. So that being said, my rating on this is not reflective of the story or author in any way. I have tried 3 times now to listen to this beautifully packaged masterpiece and have still not been able to get past half of the first chapter...All because of the horrible narrative job of William Dufris!!!

He totally lacks the talent to be able to deliver this exciting novel in the way it was written. I dont think i've ever heard a reading this bad! So again, great Author, great Novel, great series, and even packaging. Terribly done narration!

Some examples of great narration that i've heard for audiobooks are "The Talisman" by Stephen King and the "Icewind Dale Trilogy" by RA Salvatore. Great talents!!

This one....noooo!