AG Monday!
When we were youngsters, first exploring science fiction, Isaac Asimov’s robot stories were a must-read. The short story collection I, Robot, anthologized Asimov’s stories that centered on the famous Three Laws Of Robotics, the rules that governed thinking machines in his fictional setting. Now, in the real world, the Three Laws Of Robotics are not just often-quoted among SF fans, but also among people developing robots and artificial intelligences in the real world.
In the history of science fiction, Asimov’s robot stories were Important, with a capital “I.” But how well do they hold up, when our older selves return to the robot series, 40 or 50 years later? And how well did Asimov’s I, Robot anticipate the robot-related and AI-generated problems that would face people in the future? Well, um, that is, er…
Science fiction as a predictive tool! Robots going haywire! Robots going bananas! Robots going nuts! Robots getting poor performance reviews! It’s all here.
Ancient Geeks is a podcast about two geeks of a certain age re-visiting their youth. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of popular culture. We were geeks before it was chic!
For feedback, contact so**************@***il.com. You can also find us onFacebook,Reddit, andBluesky. Also, check out the Ancient Geeks blog on Substack! And if you like what you hear, please tell a friend. Also, we always appreciate a review on the podcast platform of your choice.
This had to happen in double Hell Week….
Some quick thoughts:
1) There are women in Foundation. In book two, Foundation and Empire, the protagonist is Bayta Darell. She drives a lot of the action, and (spoiler alert) eventually saves the day by preventing the Mule from obtaining the whereabouts of the Second Foundation.
In book three, Second Foundation, the protagonist is Arkady Darell, granddaughter of Bayta. She’s smart and driven, and again she drives the plot, and (spoiler alert) figures out where the Second Foundation is. Yes, she was used and deceived by the Speakers of the Second Foundation, but they picked her because she was smart and driven.
2) Asimov’s early fiction is pulpy. This is because a) he was young, and 2) he wrote for the pulp magazines of the day and imitated the style of these. He does improve later on.
3) Asimov was computer illiterate. On latter stories a backup memory on robots would render the stories moot. He never got to that level of sophistication.
4) Not only are there no robots in foundation, there are no computers, either (until the sequels). This is because Asimov regarded Foundation, robots, and computers, to be separate categories of stories.
5) One robot story that foresees real world issues that have manifested themselves by now, is Galley Slave. I think it’s found in the collection The Complete Robot, though it may be in others as well.
6) Stories published after The Complete Robot are found in Robot Dreams, and Robot Visions.
@Kathy: FWIW, I was referring only to the first book, Foundation, regarding the no women observation.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Fair enough. But there are 7 books in the series, including the 2 sequels and 2 prequels. There are women in all but one of them.
@Kathy: Sure. But I thought I was clear from the get-go that I was describing the first novel. The lack of a female with even a line of dialogue in that book was striking to me.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Want to see worse? Try The Martian Way. There were no women in the story as written. The editor at, I think, galaxy Magazine, demanded one. Asimov wrote in a rather dim, unplaesant harridan as the wife of one of the characters. She appeared in one scene.
And that’s too bad, as it’s otherwise a rather good political story, (spoiler alert) with a spectacular tables-turned scene at the end.
Lots to cover here on the second half of the podcast.
In the I, Robot collection specifically, “master” is used by the primitive robots on Mercury. It may also be used in Little Lost Robot.
The robots on Solaria don’t have names, only serial numbers, and call all humans “master” as well. Auroran robots have names, and address people as “sir” or “madam.”
Baley calls all robots, except R. Daneel, “boy.”
The robot stories, with one exception*, are not part of the Elijah Baley robot novels. Some get a mention in Robots of Dawn, as legends based largely on the very real Dr. Susan Calvin, and also in Robots and Empire (1985, BTW). One of these is Little Lost Robot.
So, no, the big brain machines of Evitable Conflict don’t show up in the robot novels.
I would recommend reading I, Robot, and the rest of the robot stories (far more of them are in other collections). For a more philosophical treatment of what robots are, try That Thou Art Mindful of Him. Or even The Bicentennial Man. Also maybe Robot Dreams (the short story).
There’s lots more to go on. Why positronic brains, how several stories got written, what the third robot novel was supposed to be and why it changed, why Asimov integrated the robot stories to the Foundation universe, etc.
BTW, most of the robot stories are mysteries, not exactly logic puzzles. A lot of Asimov’s short mystery fiction is like this. Like the Union Club Mysteries, and the Black Widower stories. most do not involve crimes.
* The exception is a story named Mirror Image. It’s about Baley and Daneel teaming up again to solve a mystery.
One last thing.
In the 90s other authors were allowed to play with Asimov’s robots. This resulted in several books. I recall tow series called Robot City, and Robots in Time. I think these were meant more for teens or young adults. I remember little about them. there may have been a third called Robots and Aliens. It was long ago.
There’s also a trilogy of robot novels set in the Elijah Baley universe, some time after Robots and Empire. I think it goes by The Caliban Trilogy, written by Roger McBride Allen.
That one’s worth reading. All three books deal with murder investigations in a Spacer World, Inferno, carried out by the local police. There’s also an illustration of the overarching theme of galactic settlement and Spacer decay.
Anyway, we see a police robot, which I think Stephen mentioned was not discussed by Asimov*. It turns out it needs special programming and calibration of three law potentials (the latter is mentioned in Runaround in I, Robot).
There are no robots used as weapons or in the military. However, in the second robot novel, The Naked Sun, the bad guy brings up ships controlled by a positronic brain, robot ships, which would carry no crew or passengers. The intent was to use them as warships, as they’d assume other ships would also be without humans onboard.
*Though R. Daneel draws a blaster on a crowd while on assignment as partner to a New York police detective….