My $.02: Book Review - The Caves of Steel

Recently, I joined a message board of like minded people who I felt reflected many of my interests (read as "geeks"). In entering a conversation one day, I had my geek credentials questioned, resulting in a pop quiz on Asimov's three laws of robotics. Having read I, Robot many years ago, I had quite forgotten these, and had my geek card taken from me. It's hard to express the shame and suffering this caused, but a kind soul recommended I read The Caves of Steel in an effort to better educate myself.

The Caves of Steel is Asimov's first full-length novel revolving around the previous world he had created in the short stories of I, Robot. While the story takes place in the far future, when man has inhabited several other worlds and intelligent robots are seemingly everywhere, it's really a simple murder mystery. Apparently, Asimov didn't really care for science fiction being seen as a genre, rather viewing it as a flavor that could be applied to other genres. Thus, we get The Caves of Steel.

The story is pretty straight forward. People who have moved off of Earth are separated from those who have remained both in distance and life views. Spacers, as those that live their lives on other planets are called on Earth, believe in strict population control, and rely completely on their robots for survival. People on Earth lives in great enclosed cities (the titular caves of steel) where they eek out a life consisting of strict rules about when you eat, what you eat, where you live, how you travel, etc., and resent any robot presence as a threat to their livelihood, as the robots take jobs away from humans.

Naturally, there is much tension between the Spacers and those who have remained behind, tension that is held tenuously in place by the fact that Spacer technology is advanced to the point where they could pretty much wipe out their terrestrial counterparts without too much effort. As such, the murder of a prominent Spacer within their Earth embassy causes much tension for those who have been assigned to solve said murder, a problem exasperated by the fact that the officer assigned the task is also assigned a Spacer partner in the form of a robot that looks just like the victim. Despite the obvious sitcom potential here, hilarity does not ensue.

Interestingly, this really doesn't read like a science fiction book. It took me a little bit to get into it, but once I did, it sort of blew by. The story was engaging, and the twists were well done and logical. Really, it was overall a good mystery story, and this is coming from someone who doesn't particularly like mysteries. I was especially impressed that when everything came out at the end, I realized that had I wanted to, it was something I could have inferred from the facts given. One of the reasons I stopped reading mysteries was that after reading most of the Sherlock Holmes stories, I got sick of feeling like there was always a clue left out, that no matter how closely I had been paying attention, I could not have guessed the outcome. There was none of that here, and it made it all the more enjoyable.

So there you go. This one definitely doesn't fall into my books-that-make-me-think-too-hard string that I've been running lately, but I enjoyed it all the more for that. Sometimes, I just need a good story.

*Clears throat*
Now then:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

There. Can I have my card back now?