58 pages • 1 hour read
Isaac AsimovThe Caves of Steel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1953A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Isaac Asimov and The Three Laws of Robotics
Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) was a prolific science fiction writer who significantly impacted 20th-century literature. He wrote over 500 books and many stories and essays across different genres, including science fiction, mystery, fantasy, children’s books, popular science, history, and religion. Asimov was a multiple award-winning author, receiving accolades such as the Hugo and Nebula prizes for science fiction writing.
Asimov was born in Russia in 1920 and moved to Brooklyn as a child. He loved learning and taught himself to read at five years old. He graduated high school at 15 and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Columbia University. Asimov received his doctorate and worked as a biochemistry professor at Boston University.
Asimov had a passion for writing for the general audience. He wrote many sci-fi works, including I, Robot and the Foundation series, which explore the relationship between humans and robots and the fall of the Galactic Empire. Asimov is credited with coining the term “robotics,” and many of his works have been adapted into films.
The Three Laws of Robotics are part of Asimov’s enduring legacy in the science fiction genre. These rules govern robots’ behavior toward humans with the primary goal being that robots must help but never harm humans. The laws are introduced in I, Robot:
- A robot may not allow a human being to come to harm or injure a human being through inaction.
- A robot must obey the orders given by humans unless the orders are in conflict with the First Law.
- A robot is entitled to protect its own existence unless its protection is in conflict with the First and Second Laws.
The Three Laws are foundational to many of Asimov’s works and to robot science fiction in general throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Later, Asimov added a Zeroth Law, which is that robots may not harm humanity either through action or inaction; R. Daneel Olivaw states this law in Robots and Empire. The Steel Caves explores the infallibility of the Three Laws when Elijah questions whether Daneel could have committed the murder.
Literary Context: The Robot Series
The Robot series is a collection of 6 novels and 37 short stories. The first book, I, Robot (1950), is a collection of nine short stories that were previously published. These stories are woven together to form a 21st-century interview with the robopsychologist, Dr. Susan Calvin. The following four books, The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun (1957), The Robots of Dawn (1983), and Robots and Empire (1985), make up the Elijah Baley series. They are mystery novels that feature the Earth detective Elijah Baley and his humanoid robot partner, R. Daneel Olivaw.
These novels are set thousands of years after the short stories and focus on the conflicts between Spacers and people from an overcrowded Earth. “Mirror Image” is one of the short stories from The Complete Robot anthology, which is set in the same period as The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn, and features both Baley and Olivaw. Another short story, “Mother Earth,” found in The Early Asimov anthology, is set about a thousand years before the Robot novels when the Spacer worlds chose to become separated from Earth. The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun are both considered classics of the genre. Still, the later novels were well-received, with The Robots of Dawn receiving nominations for both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1984 and Robots and Empire being shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1986.
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