The Caves of Steel
I enjoyed Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel so much more than I did his Foundation. This is essentially a detective story set in a future world of megacities, space exploration, and human/robot interaction. The chief tension in this future society is that of overpopulation. There are too many people and their numbers are constantly growing; soon they will pass the point of sustainability on Earth. The book explores a couple of possible solutions to this problem. One is a return to the soil, a simplification of society and return to "medieval" ways of life. The other is further space colonization, sending humans out with robots to live together on new worlds.
Asimov's attention to the tensions between humans and robots is interesting because it raises questions about what makes us truly human and separates us from machines. It also mirrors broader concerns about Otherness in the form of minorities, immigrants, and divisions of social class. Humans are suspicious of robots and harbor resentment toward them for putting them out of jobs and this resentment is treated fairly sympathetically throughout the novel, even as one of the central characters, R. Daneel Olivaw, a robot, is also treated sympathetically. Asimov presents a solution that is remarkably progressive, arguing for a future in which humans and robots can live and work together. He calls it C/Fe: Carbon is the basis of human life and iron of robot life. It becomes easy to speak of C/Fe when you wish express a culture that combines the best of the two on an equal but parallel basis. (48)
"Equal but parallel" sounds almost like the "separate but equal" racial policy of the early and mid-20th century, but Daneel's further explanation distinguishes between the two. He says, "[C/Fe] symbolizes neither one nor the other, but a mixture of the two, without priority" (48). Whether read in terms of a human/machine future or in terms of contemporary politics and Otherness, this is a promising and hopeful vision of future cooperation.
In general, this is an interesting and entertaining novel, which, although it does fall prey to some stereotypical devices of detective fiction (e.g., explaining everything away in the last few pages in long speeches), its only real weakness to my mind is Asimov's overreliance on one particular exclamation. I swear, Lije Bailey, the protagonist, says "Jehoshaphat!" a hundred times throughout the book if he says it once. In real life, people may have habitual exclamations, things they say a lot, and this might pass without too much notice, but in writing, even a few repetitions of a particular phrase starts to feel like overuse, which means that many usages begins to feel like the offending character has some sort of disorder.
Asimov's attention to the tensions between humans and robots is interesting because it raises questions about what makes us truly human and separates us from machines. It also mirrors broader concerns about Otherness in the form of minorities, immigrants, and divisions of social class. Humans are suspicious of robots and harbor resentment toward them for putting them out of jobs and this resentment is treated fairly sympathetically throughout the novel, even as one of the central characters, R. Daneel Olivaw, a robot, is also treated sympathetically. Asimov presents a solution that is remarkably progressive, arguing for a future in which humans and robots can live and work together. He calls it C/Fe: Carbon is the basis of human life and iron of robot life. It becomes easy to speak of C/Fe when you wish express a culture that combines the best of the two on an equal but parallel basis. (48)
"Equal but parallel" sounds almost like the "separate but equal" racial policy of the early and mid-20th century, but Daneel's further explanation distinguishes between the two. He says, "[C/Fe] symbolizes neither one nor the other, but a mixture of the two, without priority" (48). Whether read in terms of a human/machine future or in terms of contemporary politics and Otherness, this is a promising and hopeful vision of future cooperation.
In general, this is an interesting and entertaining novel, which, although it does fall prey to some stereotypical devices of detective fiction (e.g., explaining everything away in the last few pages in long speeches), its only real weakness to my mind is Asimov's overreliance on one particular exclamation. I swear, Lije Bailey, the protagonist, says "Jehoshaphat!" a hundred times throughout the book if he says it once. In real life, people may have habitual exclamations, things they say a lot, and this might pass without too much notice, but in writing, even a few repetitions of a particular phrase starts to feel like overuse, which means that many usages begins to feel like the offending character has some sort of disorder.