Book Review: I Robot – Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov is probably my favourite Sci-Fi writer. To me, he is the unequivocal classical sci-fi writer.

I Robot is similar to Asimov’s other books in the sense that it is made up of a collection of short stories centered around robots. These series of stories were actually originally published in a series of pulp magazines. The common thread throughout the stories is Dr. Susan Calvin, a robopsychologist employed by Earths largest robot manufacturers US Robot Inc. The stories of Dr. Calvin’s retrospection on her career, narrated to an eager journalist.

Gone are the tales of robot killers and cold hearted armies of metal over throwing the human race. Each story explores the moralistic, practical and ethnical arguments for developing artificial life. The novel is seminal in the fact that many future writers included Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics which are pinnacle to the plot:
1) A robot may not injure a human being or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm;
2) A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law
3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

These laws are created in Asimovs’ story to ensure humans place as the master because ultimately, future robots are far more intelligent and physically durable than humans will ever be. They are also more moralistic than humans (for the afore mentioned rules). Asimov uses his stories to explore this relationship and even debate if Robots should be the rulers, being more capable.

Asimov has a great sense of comedy and the stories are equally comical, as some are dark. Each story generally centers around a problem or fault with a robot which must be solved which by the end leaves you trying to figure out the solution first.
The character of Dr. Susan Calvin is outshone by the robots she encounters. Dr. Calvin is not likable - this is particularly relevant when she drives a robot into madness just to spite him and you begin to empathize with her view that robots are nicer than humans. The first story of Robbie (a little girls Nanny Robot) is particularly endearing to robots.

I’ve never been that much of a ‘robot story’ reader but I really enjoyed this book. The great thing about Asimov is that he creates books that really speculate the future. I Robot (which is nothing like the film!) could be renamed A Comprehensive Investigation into the Possible Affects to the Development of AI. You get the impression that Asimov spent a great deal of time looking into every side affect from the advances this kind of technology would create when in reality, he probably didn’t spend very long on each story. In the height of his career Asimov was churning out stories and ended his career with nearly five hundred books to his name and several hundred articles to his name.