Play Book Tag discussion

This book from the Golden Age of science fiction (1953) is interesting for what it correctly predicts (large metropolises, video calls, AI that can barely be distinguished from humans. It also has some of the amusing foibles of the time, like in a future era, people smoke in public. People on Earth live in huge cities where they never go outside. Dining and bathing are done in communal facilities, which leads to extreme privacy customs of never looking at or talking to others in those spaces. But within those communitarian societies, there are rankings that get you smaller or larger perks. There is resentment of robots taking over jobs and fear of the Others, who are from space colonies settled by Earthlings long ago.

The story is a murder mystery where the detective makes several wrong guesses very confidently before he finds the right one. The stakes are high because he could lose his job and his family's status if he fails, or if he offends the higher-ups. The detective's sidekick is actually a robot so advanced that he fools almost everyone. There is an interesting thread about religion. Asimov was famously an atheist/humanist but he uses a story from the New Testament to make a point. (Asimov was also revealed to be one of the many who behaved badly toward women in his private life, unfortunately.)