- Publisher: Random House Audio
- Audio Publish Date: 2014
- Print Copyright: 1953
- Duration: 7 hours 43 minutes
- Series: Book 2 of Robot
- ASIN: B00KY2YPLO
- Author: Isaac Asimov
- Read by: William Dufris
Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov is one of his science fiction detective novels. It was originally written as a stand-alone story, but was incorporated into his Robot and later became linked to his Foundation Trilogy. The Robot, R. Daneel Olivaw, is introduced in Caves, but becomes a recurring character for the next few tens of thousands of years in Asimov’s universe.
In this story, Earth is significantly over-populated and virtually the entire population lives in a series of densely populated cities. It is rare for an earthman to even step outside of the ‘caves of steel’ that are these cities. There are also ‘Spacer worlds’ of about fifty planets inhabited by spacers. The spacers have lost all immunity to earthbound illnesses and so have banned emigration from Earth to these worlds. They have also become more advanced than earthbound technologies, partially through the use of advanced robots. Earth culture is only reluctantly accepting robots as labor saving resources. This is causing a backlash from medievalists — people who have a longing for the past and a hatred for robots, and Spacers.
When a Spacer is killed, apparently by an Earth man, city detective, Elijah “Lije” Baley, is asked to find the murderer. He is partnered with a robot, R. Daneel Olivaw, from the nearby Spacer town and only reluctantly agrees to take the case. Olivaw is a much more advanced robot than any found in the earth cities, and is virtually indistinguishable from a human.
The book is a fun detective story as the pair hunt down clues, come to incorrect solutions and learn to work with each other. It is also relevant to our time today. The real concern of the city dwellers that robots are taking away their jobs and their livelihood reflects the current concerns of AI and how it may affect our society, our workforce, etc. Asimov’s solution of emigration to new worlds may not work for us in the short term, but the idea of learning to work with the new technologies together might.
Matt Truxaw’s newest book is Monster. This urban fantasy, horror, thriller will keep you turning the pages.
He is also the author of the hard science fiction thrillers: “Plastiphobia/Plastivore” and “Anthrophobia: A Teacher’s Tale”
You can find them all on Amazon in Paperback, Hardback, Kindle and/or free to read with Kindle Unlimited.
When you read any of them, he would really appreciate a review/rating on Amazon or your favorite book seller/book reader site.
More about Matt:
He was born in Orange County California many years ago and he still lives there. He has been reading books for most of those years and writing up book reviews for the last few years. He gets MANY of his books out of the library/Libby so expect a lot of old science fiction classics book reviews and other science related reviews in addition to newer books he comes across.
If you want to be ‘in-the-loop’ on these and other works, you can follow his website( MattTruxaw.com), his author’s page on Amazon or his Facebook page.
For more reviews and articles by Matt here on Amazing Stories (Click here).
Monster: A Novel by Matt Truxaw
