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  • The Caves of Steel: Robot, Book 1
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The Caves of Steel: Robot, Book 1

The Caves of Steel: Robot, Book 1

byIsaac Asimov
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Top positive review

All positive reviews›
Robert Carnevali
5.0 out of 5 starsInteresting, well-written, thought-provoking
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 27, 2019
I loved this book. It offered a look at an alternate future where overpopulation has fractured man into two camps. Earthlings never trusted their robot creations, preferring to keep them hidden or out of sight. Spacers embraced robots and looked to them for security and performing all the small tasks to which we're accustomed. The result is that people on Earth have lived in climate-controlled covered cities that sprawl not only above ground but below, and lived there so long that the act of being outside and exposed to nature brings forth anxiety attacks. Earthlings feel safe when they know there's people and walls all around them. Spacers, on the other hand, have taken over 50 other worlds and place more emphasis on privacy and independence, with the unacknowledged exception being their dependence on robots to watch over and protect them.

The world-building in this series of novels is very deep and detailed. All citizens of Earth are given the necessities to live, but only just enough. You get basic food, a place to sleep, and a little bit of access to recreational services. Everyone is classified according to their jobs and contributions, and the higher a classification you have, the more you are entitled to. Higher classifications get better and bigger apartments and a wider selection of food. And with food being served in cavernous cafeterias, sometimes one even gets to occasionally prepare their own meals in their own kitchens, if their rating is high enough. Bathrooms are rarely in the apartments assigned to citizens, and instead are large and sprawling communal areas where different societal norms have taken hold. Women tend to chat and socialize extensively in their "Personals", while men, in an attempt to afford each other privacy, have developed a deep aversion to acknowledging in any way other residents (never look at someone, and never ever speak inside a Personal). The difference between the two sexes almost seems a bit sexist, but in reality just reflects some of the views towards the sexes that exist even to this day. Later books in the series where life is shown on Spacer worlds shatter these conventions and seem foreign to our protagonist. All in all, it's a fascinating background in which the story unfolds.

And the story is a simple murder mystery. Elijah Baley is a detective in NYC's police department. NYC, incidentally, has grown over the centuries, and grown so large that cities like Trenton, NJ are considered boroughs and are part of the enclosed city-structure. There is a settlement of Spacers called Spacertown outside of NYC, and a prominent roboticist has been murdered. This creates a bit of a political crisis. Spacers have advanced their technology and can enforce their will upon Earth and Earthlings, who have been content to just live in their covered cities. Spacers tend to strongly dislike Earth, and there is a very real and substantial fear that Spacers may take control of Earth. Having one of their prominent citizens murdered will only enhance this, and it's up to Detective Baley to resolve this murder. He is assigned a partner in the form of R. Daneel Olivaw, a humaniform robot (one so lifelike it's hard to tell apart from a human). Daneel is one of only two robots in existence who are like this. Baley must get over his inherent dislike of robots that all Earthlings feel and work with Daneel to find the murderer and quell the rising unease between Earth and the Spacers.

Isaac Asimov is not exactly a poet with his writing, but he's very effective and clear and professional, and his world-building is superb. His attention to details draws the reader in and makes for a very effective mystery. Like all good sci-fi writers, he doesn't lose sight of the story during the process of introducing the reader to the science. By the time the story is resolved, the reader does enjoy Baley and Daneel, and has the pleasure of looking forward to reading more about them in the two follow-up stories, "The Naked Sun" and "The Robots of Dawn". Those two take place on two different Spacer worlds, and in some wonderful writing, the differences in those worlds is as dramatic as the difference is between the futuristic Earth of "The Caves of Steel" and our own present Earth. If you enjoy science-fiction that introduces new advanced concepts and worlds and ideas, but still enjoy being not so far removed from our own world that everything is unfamiliar, this is a wonderful story in which to indulge.
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10 people found this helpful

Top critical review

All critical reviews›
Robert W. Moore
3.0 out of 5 starsImportant for the fictional depiction of robots, but not very well written
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 23, 2008
When Stanislaw Lem famously castigated American SF writers for the very low quality of their books, it could well have been books like this one that he had in mind. This is not to say that there aren't many good SF writers both before and after Lem's attack, but there is a lot of justice to his comments. Far too many SF novels have only half-sketched characters, dialogues that are more like rough drafts than finished products and prose that can often be more than slightly embarrassing. This is true even with a legitimate genius like Philip K. Dick, who because he was writing for the word and not for history, left many of his books only slightly finished. I'm being very generous in giving this three stars and I am doing that because Asimov does deserve credit for helping to bring the robot back into popular imagination during the 1950s. Through his short stories and novels he helped established some ground rules for the writing about robots, most famously his rules of robotics. Asimov was somewhat better off financially than was Dick, but ultimately he also wrote for publication more than for perfection. And publishing books at the rate of around ten a year as an adult meant that taking time to polish and refine them was a luxury he could not afford.

But on literary grounds, this novel is a mess. It is a mixed hybrid, a detective novel masquerading as a SF novel. It is more successful as SF than as a mystery. The model for the detective seems to come far more from Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen than Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. This is too bad, since the latter might have meant a take on things closer to BLADE RUNNER. There is nothing of film noir in this novel. There is just some cop solving a crime. But it isn't a very interesting crime and the mystery isn't very mysterious. And the way the cop Lije Baley keeps jumping forcefully to outrageous conclusions (on two different occasions he leaps to accusing two different people of murder without coming anywhere close to assembling and testing all the evidence).

Much of the dialogue is just impossible to take. Anyone doubting me should just attempt to read any of it out loud. I suspect that Asimov wrote down dialogue only once, not to reread it or rewrite it later. Even if he did look at the draft a second time, he clearly did not lavish much attention on it.

The robot Daneel Olivaw is an interesting early fictional robot. Artificial people had, of course, been seen before. In fact, the book widely considered the first SF novel, Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, concerns the making of an artificial person. And the first SF film was Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS, with its famous female robot. But despite these examples, only a few fictional robots appeared before Asimov began lavishing his love on them. In general, I think Asimov was better in writing about robots in short form rather than in novels. His best work on robots remains the short stories comprising I, ROBOT. Today it is perhaps hard or impossible to recreate the impact reading a story about a robot who could almost pass for human had for readers at the time. When Karel Capek's R.U.R. (the stage play that introduced the word "robot" to the world) was first shown, theater goers were said to respond with shock at the appearance of actors portraying artificial people. But today, after Gort in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, Robbie (himself a homage to Asimov) in FORBIDDEN PLANET, Roy Blaty in BLADE RUNNER, Data in STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, and Six and Sharon in the new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, we are used to respond to a far more sophisticated form of artificial person. Daneel is curious, but coming after all these other creations, not terribly interesting or impressive. I think the most that we can say is that he must have been fascinating for readers at a different time.

I'm not sure whether to recommend this or not. Asimov has not garnered much respect from the literary critical community. The brute fact is that he is not a very good writer. Critics have not embraced him like them have Philip K. Dick or Kim Stanley Robinson or Stanislaw Lem or Ursula LeGuin or J. G. Ballard or Marge Piercy. So, I think I can say that if you approach this book as an experienced reader of great general literature, you will find this book to be a thundering disappointment. If you are exclusively a reader of SF and read little or nothing outside the field, go ahead. It isn't the worst book ever written. And it does have the historical importance of laying out one of the first templates for writing about robots.
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From the United States

Robert Carnevali
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, well-written, thought-provoking
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 27, 2019
Verified Purchase
I loved this book. It offered a look at an alternate future where overpopulation has fractured man into two camps. Earthlings never trusted their robot creations, preferring to keep them hidden or out of sight. Spacers embraced robots and looked to them for security and performing all the small tasks to which we're accustomed. The result is that people on Earth have lived in climate-controlled covered cities that sprawl not only above ground but below, and lived there so long that the act of being outside and exposed to nature brings forth anxiety attacks. Earthlings feel safe when they know there's people and walls all around them. Spacers, on the other hand, have taken over 50 other worlds and place more emphasis on privacy and independence, with the unacknowledged exception being their dependence on robots to watch over and protect them.

The world-building in this series of novels is very deep and detailed. All citizens of Earth are given the necessities to live, but only just enough. You get basic food, a place to sleep, and a little bit of access to recreational services. Everyone is classified according to their jobs and contributions, and the higher a classification you have, the more you are entitled to. Higher classifications get better and bigger apartments and a wider selection of food. And with food being served in cavernous cafeterias, sometimes one even gets to occasionally prepare their own meals in their own kitchens, if their rating is high enough. Bathrooms are rarely in the apartments assigned to citizens, and instead are large and sprawling communal areas where different societal norms have taken hold. Women tend to chat and socialize extensively in their "Personals", while men, in an attempt to afford each other privacy, have developed a deep aversion to acknowledging in any way other residents (never look at someone, and never ever speak inside a Personal). The difference between the two sexes almost seems a bit sexist, but in reality just reflects some of the views towards the sexes that exist even to this day. Later books in the series where life is shown on Spacer worlds shatter these conventions and seem foreign to our protagonist. All in all, it's a fascinating background in which the story unfolds.

And the story is a simple murder mystery. Elijah Baley is a detective in NYC's police department. NYC, incidentally, has grown over the centuries, and grown so large that cities like Trenton, NJ are considered boroughs and are part of the enclosed city-structure. There is a settlement of Spacers called Spacertown outside of NYC, and a prominent roboticist has been murdered. This creates a bit of a political crisis. Spacers have advanced their technology and can enforce their will upon Earth and Earthlings, who have been content to just live in their covered cities. Spacers tend to strongly dislike Earth, and there is a very real and substantial fear that Spacers may take control of Earth. Having one of their prominent citizens murdered will only enhance this, and it's up to Detective Baley to resolve this murder. He is assigned a partner in the form of R. Daneel Olivaw, a humaniform robot (one so lifelike it's hard to tell apart from a human). Daneel is one of only two robots in existence who are like this. Baley must get over his inherent dislike of robots that all Earthlings feel and work with Daneel to find the murderer and quell the rising unease between Earth and the Spacers.

Isaac Asimov is not exactly a poet with his writing, but he's very effective and clear and professional, and his world-building is superb. His attention to details draws the reader in and makes for a very effective mystery. Like all good sci-fi writers, he doesn't lose sight of the story during the process of introducing the reader to the science. By the time the story is resolved, the reader does enjoy Baley and Daneel, and has the pleasure of looking forward to reading more about them in the two follow-up stories, "The Naked Sun" and "The Robots of Dawn". Those two take place on two different Spacer worlds, and in some wonderful writing, the differences in those worlds is as dramatic as the difference is between the futuristic Earth of "The Caves of Steel" and our own present Earth. If you enjoy science-fiction that introduces new advanced concepts and worlds and ideas, but still enjoy being not so far removed from our own world that everything is unfamiliar, this is a wonderful story in which to indulge.
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome novel
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 21, 2023
Verified Purchase
It's fun
Read it.
And think the future of AI and human.

Classic is permanent.

And there are two more story!!
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Jeffrey P Phillips
5.0 out of 5 stars Second beginning of the Robots, and a great mystery
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 22, 2023
Verified Purchase
Though somewhat dated, this book is a great mystery that kicks off the robot series by Asimov. The start of humanity really moving out to explore new worlds and find more homes for everyone. Oddly enough to predict potentials for humanity’s demise, and yet offer hope.
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Morgan
5.0 out of 5 stars one of the best Science Fiction books ever written
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 7, 2023
Verified Purchase
This book is an absolute masterpiece and one of Asimov’s best which says a lot since he wrote over 500 books. In Caves of Steel Asimov sets the stage for a future where robots are integrated into society, albeit begrudgingly, and weaved into mysteries. Introducing the new crime-fighting detective duo, Baley and Daneel this book kicks off one of the best series in SciFi history.

Asimov’s descriptive writing style and fantastic world building makes this a real treat and a glimpse and true literary perfection in every sense.
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msmoon
VINE VOICE
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent story
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 6, 2023
Verified Purchase
I've always been a great fan of Asimov and can't wait to read this book. The cover is attractive so I picked this book after deciding what to read next from him. Will do a thoroughly review once I read it.
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Doug Palmer
5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent piece of Speculative Fiction
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 18, 2023
Verified Purchase
This book is prescient in so many ways. The ethics of robotics and its effects on society based upon mid-century knowledge is great.
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Lloyd
5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Asimov's, and such a believable story
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 19, 2023
Verified Purchase
What a treat, Asimov's 1st Robot story, and what a wonderful story, indeed. This story sets the stage for all of the others, so definitely read this, trust me. You'll also find it a fairly fast read, too, though don't mistake this for a simple story, because it's anything but.
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Allen Gerner
5.0 out of 5 stars who Done It
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 25, 2023
Verified Purchase
Good Murder mystery. This book is the basis for the movie, “I, Robot”. You won’t guess who did it until the very end.
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aawillis
5.0 out of 5 stars The Caves of Steel
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 21, 2023
Verified Purchase
This was a gift I gave to my daughter this past Christmas. She was very happy to receive it.
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Phil in Magnolia
5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Sci-Fi from the Great Isaac Asimov
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 19, 2018
Verified Purchase
I grew up with Asimov, along with Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and many other great writers during that classic time of science fiction writing.

Today it is just as enjoyable to return to these books. They have lost very little of their impact despite the many years that have gone by - in the case of The Caves of Steel, nearly 65 years ago (it was first published in February of 1954). In fact, it is remarkable how well this story has aged.

The title 'Caves of Steel' refers to how Earth has evolved into massive cities, where the population lives, works and recreates without ever departing into the 'real world' of sunlight, wind and rain. Mankind has separated into two groups, the majority remaining on earth and a smaller number who have emigrated to other planets. Robots are an established part of both groups, but the humans who have remained on Earth are distrustful of robots.

Asimov's famous 'Three Laws of Robotics' are integral to the story:

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 the orders given 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 Laws.

This is a refreshing, enjoyable and worthwhile story that reminds me how great Asimov was, and remains.
11 people found this helpful
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