Science Fiction Author Profile: Isaac Asimov

Science Fiction Author Profile: Isaac Asimov
By Dwayne Wright

I just listened to Caves Of Steel on an audio book on a recent drive to visit family in California. This is the second pass for me on this book and remember I had written about it in a Sci-Fi class back in 2005 at the Danville Community College. I found the paper I wrote and thought I’d go ahead and post it to my blog.

When a second author profile paper was assigned to our class, I had no earthly idea which author I would pick. Isaac Asimov wasn’t even on the short list at that time. Not that I didn’t like him but I wanted to stretch my mental muscles in an unfamiliar direction. However, one thing did stick in my mind from our class reading of the short story “Robot Dreams.” In the forward of the story, it mentioned that Isaac Asimov wrote a three story arc of books about a murder detective with a robot sidekick. So I went to the local Danville Public Library and picked out four promising potential books for the class. The selection included one by Isaac Asimov, two by Philip K. Dick and one by James Tiptree Jr.


I’m not a big fan of robots in science fiction and it’s because robots are seldom done well. Many times the robot is the cute/comedy break within the science fiction story. However, the idea of a detective story underneath some classic science fiction was attractive to me. I started out with one of the Doubleday book club specials. You know the ones that include two books within one book cover special. Billed as The Robot Novels, “The Caves Of Steel” and “The Naked Sun” are the first two books in the Elijah Baley detective series. I started in on “The Caves Of Steel” and 20 pages later, I had found my author.

OFF THE BEATEN PATH COMMENTS: For some reason, I seem to be drawn to reading what science fiction authors in the past (mostly works from the 50s and 60s) wrote about our future. Reading these works almost feel like reading the past and reading the future within the same passage. It is a shame that many science fiction movies adapted from these works ... are modernized ... and not presented in the way they were presented within the book.

Quickly, I would like to mention some interesting facts about Isaac Asimov that I gathered from the internet. Most of this information came from www.asimovonline.com. It took nineteen years for Asimov to publish his first 100 books, ten years to publish the next 100, and only five years to bring the total up to 300. The web site allows you to download a listing of all his works including over 1600 essays!

BACK TO THESE TWO NOVELS: Here is a condensed version of what is going on in the galaxy setting of these two books. Earth went out and settled roughly 50 planets, much like the way North America was discovered and settled. Just like North America in our history, these planets quickly began to resent Earth rule and declared independence. Eventually, Earth began to withdrawal from space exploration and withdrew into these large huge underground cities. Billions and billions of humans live in these cities and have never ventured out into the open air. In fact, earth society has been like this for so long, that everyone is absolutely agoraphobic. Everyone lives in an apartment that is equal to a classification rating and the food is a high yield yeast product grown by robot farmers. Robots do all the outside work for humans and are resented by the earth culture. The classic “My Job Was Taken Over By A Robot” is the central theme to this resentment towards robots.

To compare the situation to North America again, the outside planets thrived under their own self rule. The human race on these outside planets became known as Spacers. Due to a combination of factors, the Spacers have virtually wiped out disease and have extremely long lives because of this. They also rely highly on robots, so they don’t have the health risks associated with manual labor. Because of the risk of reintroducing disease to their society, they limit their exposure to earthlings. So a natural resentment occurs between the earthlings and spacers on a number of levels. To help ease relations between the two societies, the Spacers have built a city on Earth called Spacetown. Although it is very much a walled off city from the human underground domes, it does provide some basis for interaction.

So now we can begin to discuss our two main characters for this series of three novels. Elijah Baley is our earthman detective. He is a family man in his forties and is content with his life as we become introduced to him. As each story progresses, Elijah becomes less content and begins to grow as a person. In “Caves Of Steel”, a murder occurs in Spacetown and an Earthling is suspected of deed. For some reason, Elijah is assigned to the case, which is has a higher political profile than you would think he would cover. As part of the agreement with the Spacers, a Spacer detective is assigned to Elijah. Daneel Olivaw is tall, lean and quite competent. He does not seem to fear interaction with Earthlings and we find out later it is because he is a robot. He is the first robot that is almost indistinguishable from a human.
The remainder of this story is part detective novel, part a glimpse into the future and ... a large dose of ... learning about and dealing with prejudice. The issue of prejudice is examined from multiple angles and viewpoints. In some cases, Mr. Asimov tells us how we should feel about it (through the interaction of the characters) and sometimes he just tosses something out there and moves on.

In the second novel, our detective Elijah Baley is sent to a mysterious outer world called Solaria. Solaria, like earth, does not interact much with the rest of the galaxy. The entire planet has only 20,000 inhabitants and that number is controlled. As you may have guessed, they rely heavily for robots of every type and “robot expertise” is the planets main export product. In many ways, they are the polar opposite of earth. People hate to “see” each other and only interact via a 3D process called “viewing.” You can manage the impact that a murder could cause in such a society.

Here we get to see Elijah Bailey deal with his agoraphobia and push the limits of his new found respect for robots, which is only acquired in the previous novel. We also get to see how some of the Solarians deal with their phobias as well. As you were probably thinking, Elijah gets partnered again with everyone favorite robot Daneel Olivaw. Asimov did a great job of picking up from the last novel and developing these characters even more.

So, now back to the early 21st century, within the Eastern Illinois childhood home of Gene Hackman, how did this assignment affect me? First off, I’m going to try and score these books off of eBay. I’d also like to get the collection of his “Lucky Starr” series of books. Lucky Starr might have been the very first science fiction that I read. I really liked the various aspects of prejudice brain plucking that Mr. Asimov did for us. I have become a little attached to Elijah Bailey and Daneel Olivaw.