The Caves of Steel
The template SF-mystery hybrid and origin of fiction's first great human/robot buddy partnership; Baley and Daneel's successors staff half of modern SF television.
Book Entry · Science Fiction
What is I, Robot about?
Nine linked stories, framed as the reminiscences of robopsychologist Dr Susan Calvin, charting robotics from a mute nursemaid called Robbie to machines quietly running the world economy. Each story is a logic puzzle in which the Three Laws of Robotics — no harm to humans, obedience, self-preservation, in that order — collide with circumstances and produce behaviour that looks like madness until someone reasons it through. Calvin herself, brilliant and unsentimental, is the collection's steel spine. The 2004 Will Smith film borrowed the title and little else.
Why it matters
Established the Three Laws, science fiction's most influential ethical framework for machines, and replaced the Frankenstein-robot with the engineering problem. Foundational, in every sense.
Where does it sit in the series?
Asimov's Three Laws universe, from the positronic puzzle stories of I, Robot to the Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw detective novels that eventually dovetail with Foundation.
In the Guide from Robot series:
- The Caves of Steel (1954)
- I, Robot (1950)
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