The Caves of Steel

So after reading I, Robot and this one, I'm getting a good sense of the vibe of Asimov's Robot series - it's like if the 50's got extrapolated into the far-flung future (but still with some 50's constraints, like the way it characterizes women and even men predominantly smoking on pipes), but with a good mix of Christie-style mystery plus philosophy on what it means to be humans in the face of burgeoning technology.

We are imagining a society much, much further into the future than the world we saw in I, Robot. Earth has had a complex history by this point, having once colonised what is now known as the Outer Worlds, but then now having retracted back to an isolationist planet where humankind struggles under the weight of an ever-increasing global population without the resources to handle it (which all honestly sounds very familiar at this point, only 70ish years into the future from when this book was written). Meanwhile, the descendants of the extraterrestrial human colonies, called Spacers, have returned to Earth with their superior technologies and set up camp in an area called Spacetown, and have a tenuous relationship with the Earthmen.

This particular book is essentially a whodunnit at its core, but with dozens of other layers on top of it. A prominent Spacer scientist has been murdered and Earthman police inspector Elijah Baley is put on the case (against his will). He is assigned a Spacer partner, R. Daneel Olivaw - R. standing for Robot - who was built by and looks exactly like the murder victim. Their investigation is mired by the politics of their world, with a radical group called the Medievalists on Earth calling for a “return to the soil” and releasing Earthmen from their Cities, essentially ‘caves of steel' where everything, up to the air they breathe and the ground they walk on, is controlled and coordinated. The open world outside the Cities are almost like nightmare fuel to the Earthmen, who can't imagine facing unpredictable airflow (wind) and stepping on unknown substances (soil). Throughout all this, there is an anti-robot sentiment amongst the Earthmen, and an advanced model like Daneel who is almost indistinguishable from humans stirs fresh unease amongst them.

From the above alone, you can probably already tell that there is much fertile soil here to provoke so many interesting thoughts. What is the line that distinguishes us from a humanoid robot? When we are the creators of technology that's superior to us in almost every way, where would that leave us? Is there still a space for humanity in a world that could be overrun by robots? I won't be ruminating too much on those thoughts in my review since I don't have the answers either to all of the above, but they are all such interesting questions, and even more so today in 2022 than it probably was back in 1953 when this book was released.

What I did also find very interesting was seeing a future that was imagined back in the 1950s and therefore limited by the reality of the 50s. For one, the only female character of note in this book, Elijah Baley's wife Jessie (short for Jezebel), behaves almost exactly like how one might expect a typical 1950s housewife to be characterised (by men). Neurotic, overemotional, and making bad decisions based on illogical thought processes. She already feels far enough from a typical female character in 2022, never mind this far-flung future several millenia from now.

Another point of note is that Biblical ideas is a bit of a motif in this book. Elijah and Jessie are both named after Biblical characters and the characters they are named after, particularly Jezebel, is discussed. At one point, Elijah tells Daneel that Christianity is the religion of “half the world's population”. Religions rise and fall so imagining a world so many millenia into the future with Christianity going so strong sounds a bit like the author's own biases coming in here.

Ultimately, this was a very interesting and very quick read. I don't know how it managed to fit all of those into such a short novel without feeling too rushed or confusing, but it did. Definitely recommended for anyone interested in the philosophy of AI vs humanity, sci-fi, and mysteries.