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The Caves of Steel--In The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov first introduced Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw, who would later become his favorite protagonists. The book's central crime is a murder, which takes place before the novel opens. Roj Nemmenuh Sarton, a Spacer Ambassador, lives in Spacetown, the Spacer outpost just outside New York City. For some time, he has tried to convince the Earth government to loosen its anti-robot restrictions. One morning, he is discovered outside his home, his chest imploded by an energy blaster. The New York police commissioner charges Elijah with finding the murderer. Elijah must work with a Spacer partner, a highly advanced robot who is visually identical to a human, named R. Daneel Olivaw, even though Elijah, like many Earth residents, has a low opinion of robots. Together, they search for the murderer and try to avert an interstellar diplomatic incident. The Naked Sun--Like its famous predecessor, The Naked Sun is a whodunit story, in addition to being science fiction. The story arises from the murder of Rikaine Delmarre, a prominent scientist of Solaria, a planet politically hostile to Earth. Elijah Baley is called in to investigate, at the request of the Solarian government. He is again partnered with the humaniform robot R. Daneel Olivaw. Robots of Dawn--The Robots of Dawn is the third novel in Asimov's Robot series. Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw team up to solve the roboticide of a robot identical to Olivaw on the Spacer world of Aurora. The robot's inventor, Han Fastolfe, has been implicated. Fastolfe, who was last seen in The Caves of Steel, is the best roboticist on Aurora. He has admitted that he is the only person with the skill to have done it, although he denies doing it. Fastolfe is also a prominent member of the Auroran political faction that favors Earth. Implication in the crime threatens his political career; therefore, it is politically expedient that he be exonerated.… (more)
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Asimov’s 1954 novel was written in part to prove to his editor that the genres of Science Fiction and Mystery could be successfully blended. Extreme urbanization has turned earthlings into city dwellers and cities into enormous domed enclosures with their inhabitants living in the titles caves of steel. On Earth robots are machines that work outside the cities in mines and on farms. Humans from the Outer Worlds live in relative luxury and companionably with their much more sophisticated robots in what they call a C/Fe culture a blending of carbon and iron based beings. Unfortunately for the human Spacers they’ve also completely lost their natural immunity to all terrestrial disease and dare not venture forth from their Spacetown embassy or they will sicken and die.
The book has several themes in addition to the cultural conflict between a Luddite home planet and its richer and more technologically advanced former colonies. Urbanization is one; the other is automation, the replacement of human labor by machinery. The Spacers cannot understand why the earthlings cling to a planet where life is barely sustainable when they could emigrate to the stars and eventually retire to a life of luxury and leisure made possible by C/Fe culture. And they are actively working to advance that political agenda.
Baley’ partner R. Daneel Olivaw (the R. is for robot) is the obvious model for the android character Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It would seem that the television writers borrowed more than the term for positronic brain from Asimov for the perfectly logical and occasionally bemused by human behavior mechanical humanoid robot.
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The Naked Sun: