I, Robot

[cornerofmadness]

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'll be honest, I gave this one star because I respect it's history. Let me give you MY history with this book. I tried reading it in high school some 40 years ago because my only friends were other SF nerds. I noped out and pretending to read it. This time I was going to do it....and wished I hadn't. It was every bit as dull to me as it had been when I was 15.

But I DO respect the history of it. These stories appeared once a year over the span of a decade from 1940-1950 and for that time period, they had to have been something else. They are iconic. Even if you haven't read them, if you know anything about SF and robots you know Asimov's three laws of robotics. It also gives us a female character of some power, a robot psychologist Susan Calvin who is a repeating character (as are the two sad sacks, Donovan and Powell and a few others).

Yes, Asmiov never did well with women (but again look at the time period here, he was doing okay for then) and yes Susan is probably where the woman scientist who is drab, unable to dress well or wear make up correctly comes from but she wasn't entirely awful.

The robot would could read minds? Yeah that was awful.

The decade gives us robots who can barely talk to those who can hide among humans as the stories move through the years. It gives us mining on Mercury and world politics and colonization of other planets. It also gives us a lot of people doing nothing but talking...and talking...and talking some more. These are tremendously static stories that even the tension feels flat.

If you're a SF fan, should you read them? Maybe. It's going to be a YMMV anthology more so than many others might be. At least I made it through it once (full disclosure, I DNFed some of the stories mid way and moved on they were so dull)



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