Asimov's I, Robot

Probably one of the best classic sci-fi books, this is a brainy anthology of short stories written in the 1940's.

Asimov was born in the USSR (that's the previous Russia to today's Russia for you) but his family emigrated to the USA, where he then made his life, and became American. And I mention it because when you read this book, you cannot fail to think that, it's a very American book in many ways, although perhaps it reflects the version of America that was current back in the 1940's when Asimov wrote the series of short stories that comprise this book; originally for publication in a Science Fiction magazine. "Astounding Science Fiction", I think it was called.

Isaac, (Never met the guy, but since I've read pretty much all of his books, I'm entitled to talk about him on a first name basis)... Isaac liked to write "brainy stuff": Not necessarily the best characters or super engaging story arcs, nor the best dialog, but rather he liked to focus on doing "mental experiments" and providing food for thought and various "what if?" scenarios related to technology.

And "I, Robot" has some concepts that even today, in the 2020's...that's almost a full century later, mind you; even today, they sound very relevant.

Generally, the whole book is based on the premise that, robots, in the far away future of 1999, would have the ability to think thanks to their positronic brains, but their designers, considering the possibilities for chaos and destruction that robots could cause, had embedded in their brain design three unbreakable rules of behavior, in order of importance:

A robot cannot harm a human being.

A robot must obey a human being.

A robot must protect his own existence.

The idea being that, while a robot must obey human orders, it wouldn't be possible to order a robot to kill another human being, since the robot's behavior cannot confict with higher order laws.

With that basis, each of the stories in this book is a thought experiment on a set of circumstances that would test the above laws and produce interesting situations and conflicts.

In addition to the problems themselves, which are interesting, there's the concept of "Robopsychology" a science that deals with the functioning of robotic minds, and which generally involves the art of giving them precise and unequival instructions on how to do things to avoid conflicts between the above laws. Kinda like programming, now that I think of it.

I also really liked the passages on Dr Susan Calvin, later a lead Robopsychologist, and found fascinating the idea of a mega-industrial corporation producing robots for all kinds of applications: US Robots.

Nevertheless, some of the situations and language can feel a bit outdated, but I don't think that's a factor that takes away from the book; just bear in mind it was written nearly a century ago. Read it. It's still very interesting material.

One final interesting tidbit: In one of the stories, somebody calls a robot, and calls him "boy". Do you know why? And what is Isaac telling us about robots in the stories by that little detail? Your homework before reading.

Get it on Amazon, following the link below!