I, Robot (Robot, #0.1) in The Challenge Factory

Sep 02, 2015 Canavan rated it liked it

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The stories in I, Robot are probably among the earliest science fiction stories I ever read, so I was curious to see how the passage of time would affect my perception of them. The book is a fix-up — the individual stories were written over a period of about 10 years and subsequently collected in book form. The stories (some, I assume, revised slightly for the collection) are interconnected via a somewhat awkward framing device in which an unnamed reporter interviews Dr. Susan Calvin, a r ✭✭✭

The stories in I, Robot are probably among the earliest science fiction stories I ever read, so I was curious to see how the passage of time would affect my perception of them. The book is a fix-up — the individual stories were written over a period of about 10 years and subsequently collected in book form. The stories (some, I assume, revised slightly for the collection) are interconnected via a somewhat awkward framing device in which an unnamed reporter interviews Dr. Susan Calvin, a robopsychologist who features prominently in Asimov’s fictional history of the “postronic” robot. The stories are for the most part structured as quasi-mysteries; that is, the story protagonists are faced with some aberrant robot behavior and must decipher the origins of such behavior given the constraints of the (by now famous) three robotics laws.

Some of the stories here hold up rather well. But they do highlight Asimov’s limitations as a writer. Characters tend to be rather one dimensional and the writing itself is often a bit clunky; there’s an over-reliance, for example, on dialog tags (people are alway snarling, &c., &c.). By and large, I preferred those stories which featured Calvin as opposed to those with the Gregory/Donovan duo. The story I liked best is the one least like any of the others — “Robbie” was the first robot story written by Asimov, inspired, he said, by Eando Binder’s short story, “I, Robot”. Unlike the other stories, “Robbie” is less about hard-to-decipher robotic behavior than about human behavior vis-à-vis robots. It’s not perfect and it’s pretty mawkish, but I have a high tolerance for that kind of stuff.

“Robbie” (variant title: “Strange Bedfellow”) (1940) ✭✭✭✭½
“Runaround” (1942) ✭✭½
“Reason” (1941) ✭✭✭½
“Catch That Rabbit” (1944) ✭✭
“Liar!” (1941) ✭✭½
“Little Lost Robot” (1947) ✭✭✭½
“Escape!” (1945) ✭✭
“Evidence” (1946) ✭✭✭✭
“The Evitable Conflict” (1950) ✭✭✭½ ...more

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Oct 17, 2018 Book Concierge rated it really liked it

Shelves: concierge, library, audio, series, classic, science-fiction

Digital audio narrated by Scott Brick

I’ve never been a great fan of science fiction but this book has been on my tbr for ages. The thread that weaves the chapters together is Susan Calvin, PhD – a specialist in “Robopsychology.” At the age of 75, she is retiring from U.S. Robots and being interviewed by a journalist about her life-long work. She tells the stories of the advance (and decline?) of robotics.

What fascinates me about this is that it was written in 1948 and is STILL set in the futur ...more

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Mar 29, 2014 Nancy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, still-owned

Despite its age, this book still definitely holds its own because rather than a book about technology and the future of technology, it is actually a sociological study in what it means to be human. The book takes the form of a series of stories relating incidents with robots as they become progressively more advanced. Robots had been started to be used commonly in the 1990s, and by the end of the book robots were being relied on for the maintenance of human happiness and success. But, where robo ...more

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Nov 21, 2010 Trisha rated it liked it · review of another edition

I thought this was a very well written book with an interesting style ~ the form of memories told by a woman that a journalist writes down. You tend to forget you are not a party to the stories you are writing, but only an observer after the fact.

Nothing like the movie, I really enjoyed it.

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