I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
My rating: 3 of 5 stars Golden Age Optimistic Robot SF of Ideas Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot (1950) is a fix-up composite novel comprised of nine previously published short stories which, connected by italics passages, recount the development of robotics in the twenty-first century from rudimentary mute robots to communicative and reasoning machines and finally to super “Brains.” That development was made possible by the positronic brain-paths in a spongy globe of plantinumiridium (!?) about the size of a human brain, enabling robots to make (supposedly) predictable responses. All robots are built with the Three Laws of Robotics programmed into them: First, no robot shall harm any human, nor through inaction cause any human to come to harm; Second, all robots must obey any human command (as long as it doesn’t conflict with the first law); Third, all robots must seek to preserve their own existences (as long as doing so doesn’t conflict with the first or second laws). Human resentment at being replaced by intelligent machines has meant that robots are pretty much banned from earth or any other place of human habitation. This means that most of the stories in the book feature robots working on planets, space stations, asteroids and the like, places without substantial human populations. The conflicts in most of the stories involve working robots who appear to be malfunctioning, requiring United States Robots, Inc.’s troubleshooting field-engineers Powell and Donovan or the corporation’s “Robopsychologist” Dr. Susan Calvin to conduct interviews or experiments and the like to find the source of the problem, usually some kind of conflict among the Three Laws of Robotics. The italicized glue combining the stories into a “novel” consist of the aged Dr. Susan Calvin introducing or concluding the stories while being interviewed by a young reporter for Interplanetary Press on the eve of her retirement after a fifty-year career. Here is an annotated list of the stories: --“Robbie” (1940): A little girl loves her mute nursemaid robot Robbie (gendered male), while her mother is opposed to her daughter spending so much time with the machine. --“Runaround” (1942): Powell and Donovan are sent to Mercury, where they must quickly discover why the robot Speedy is running around a selenium pool in circles instead of collecting the vital resource. --“Reason” (1941): Powell and Donovan are on a space station where Cutie, a new model robot, uses his reason to figure out that there’s no way that “makeshift” humans could have made him and that his Maker is the Energy Converter of the station. --“Catch that Rabbit” (1944): Powell and Donovan are now on a mining asteroid, where they must figure out why a new type of robot called Davy and his six “fingers” (satellite robots) do bizarre marches and dances instead of working when humans are not nearby. --“Liar!” (1941): Dr. Susan Calvin painfully learns what happens when you mix a unique telepathic robot (with a fondness for human fiction) with the First Law of Robotics (no robot shall harm a human or through inaction cause a human harm). --“Little Lost Robot” (1947): Dr. Susan Calvin travels to a Hyper Drive Station among some asteroids so she can help locate the robot who’s been made with part of the First Law of Robotics missing (the clause saying no robot shall let a human come to harm by inaction). The robot is hiding among sixty-two other identical seeming ones. --“Escape” (1945): Can US Mechanical Men and Robots use their “Brain” to calculate how humans may safely achieve interstellar space travel without creating an insoluble dilemma that might destroy the childlike (and mischievous) super-calculating machine? --“Evidence” (1946): Attorney Stephen Byerley seems certain to win election as Mayor, but he seems too good to be true, and he’s never been seen to eat or drink in public. Could he be a robot in disguise? Might not robots make better political leaders than people do? --“The Evitable Conflict” (1950): the Machines (super robots) are running things for humanity, economically speaking, when the (probably) human World Coordinator is alarmed by recent mistakes or problems in the four Regions (Eastern, Tropic, European, Northern) into which the former countries of earth have been grouped. Not to worry, Dr. Susan Calvin tells him: the Machines are taking us to the destiny they deem best for us. Asimov bases his vision of robots on a big assumption: that unscrupulous or careless people or corporations would never make robots without the Three Laws programmed properly into the machines. By showing some robots getting caught in contradictory loops when tasked with doing something that might contradict one of their three laws, Asimov plays with the possibility that problems might arise despite everyone adhering to the rules, but he sure doesn’t envision missile drones or military robots or Terminators or Murderbots or the like. Just robots being used for dangerous or difficult labor or for helping humans with economic problems, etc. The last story has a character say (speaking for Asimov, it would seem), “The Machine is only a tool after all, which can help humanity progress faster by taking some of the burdens of calculations and interpretations off its back. The task of the human brain remains what it has always been; that of discovering new data to be analyzed, and of devising new concepts to be tested.” By the way, although it might be the case that Donovan is more ill-tempered and prone to angry outbursts while Powell is more thoughtful and helpful, they seem to trade those roles here and there, and there’s almost nothing really distinguishing the field-engineers (who seem to have no love lives or families) in appearance or manner, except one guy (Powell?) has a mustache he touches or tugs on. The story “Liar!” does play with human motivations, but it displays Calvin in an unappealing light. Pretty rudimentary characterization of the characters, but then that’s not what Asimov is up to. His sf here is of the idea-type. And most of the stories are interesting, entertaining, and well-crafted (if not aesthetically pleasing) mysteries. Readers interested in one of the early giants of American sf and one of the early influences on future robot stories should take a look. View all my reviews
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