I, Robot

[Arrian]

The things is, part of the zeroth law was to remove robots from humanity due to the peversions of the spacer worlds, specially on Inferno.

Memory... hazy... can't recall...

I haven't read that part in quite some time. Care to refresh my memory?

-Arrian

[Q Classic]

i'm with imran.

if it's "based" on the book so loosely as to not really have anything major like PLOT in common with it at all, they have no ****ing right to call it by the same title.

same problem with that new time machine movie that came out.

abominations.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Though I will say seeing the movie made me wish someone was going to make a System Shock movie.

Hell the game didn't even sell that well... you think a movie will?

[DinoDoc]

Anyway, once I get done with The Manchurian Candidate (another book I've been inspired to read by a movie), which of the Robot novels should I pick up?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


Hell the game didn't even sell that well... you think a movie will?

It had an interesting plot that I think would be entertaining to see on screen.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
i'm with imran.

if it's "based" on the book so loosely as to not really have anything major like PLOT in common with it at all,

or even SETTING.

[Arrian]

Dino:

From Wikipedia:

The final four robot novels comprise the Elijah Baley (sometimes Lije Baley) series and are mysteries starring the Terran human Elijah Baley and his humaniform robot partner, R. Daneel Olivaw. They are set approximately 2000 years after the short stories, and focus on the conflicts between Spacers - descendants of human settlers from other planets, and the people from overcrowded Earth. One of the short stories from The Complete Robot - "Mirror Image" anthology is also set in this time period (between The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun), and features both Baley and Olivaw. Another short story (found in The Early Asimov anthology), "Mother Earth", is set about a thousand years before the robot novels, when the Spacer worlds chose to become separated from Earth.

I liked those.

-Arrian

[DinoDoc]

I was curious which you liked best or would I have to read them in order.

[Arrian]

I read them a long time ago (11 years, in fact), so I don't really remember which I liked best. I think they do kind of go in order, so start with Caves of Steel.

-Arrian

[monkspider]

Despite Imran's notoriously bad taste in film ( ), I have to agree with him on his outrage on I, Robot being made into such an attrocity.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Arrian


Memory... hazy... can't recall...

I haven't read that part in quite some time. Care to refresh my memory?

-Arrian

In the timeline of Asimov's universe, Robots and interstellar drives are discovered around the same time. The first space colonies are set up with the labor of robots. These become the 50 Spacer worlds, led by Aurora. In all of them, a small human population lives in luxury while armies or robots follow their every whim. People become complacent and satisfied, so no further expansion happens. On Earth there is an anti-Robot backlash, and most robots don;t exist there. Eventually, the Spacer worlds sort of quarentine earth. The whole Bailey/Daneel series is about Bailey the earther and Daneel the spacer robot examining crimes usually carried out by a robot. In this series, a series of scandals force the spacer worlds to allow earth to carry out a new round of space colonization, whcih earth does without robots. These become the settler worlds.

I forget which book, but it is in this time that a Robot carries out the zeroth law: I forget the name of the robot, but he sees the settler worlds as the new source of human dynamism-unfortunitaly, they seem to bound to mother earth. He allows a cabal of Spacers to set of a device that will irradiate the earth and make it unliveable in order to allow the settler worlds to break free of the memory of earth and spread.

The settler worlds become the empire evenntually- earth is forgotten, and the spacer worlds die off on thier lonely own.

A few other things are added by writers after the foundation series, like the notion that Inferno, the last spacer world settled and the one most dependent on robots, survived, and the survivors muted into telepaths who were eventually seen as the great threat to Gaia. Also, that Robots set up a fleet of spaceships that went around preparing the universe for human settlement (hence the millions of ready worlds), but in doing so killed of non-human intelliegences (hence no aliens)

[Arrian]

A few other things are added by writers after the foundation series, like the notion that Inferno, the last spacer world settled and the one most dependent on robots, survived, and the survivors muted into telepaths who were eventually seen as the great threat to Gaia.

I thought that was Solaria. In "Foundation and Earth" Solaria is the last Spacer world colonized, and the last functioning. The population have amazing mental powers, which they got via deliberately playing with their genes.

-Arrian

[KrazyHorse]

It was Solaria.

Inferno was the attempt to colonise a joint spacer-settler world, IIRC.

There was a trilogy written about Inferno by an author other than Asimov (Asimov never mentioned Inferno in any of his books, and the trilogy was written after Asimov died)/

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Just based on the blurb at the back of the book The Robots of Dawn looks like it would make for the more interesting movie of the Robot novels.

I think the Caves of Steel would be the best one.

Robots of Dawn has too much political intigue and the setting is too pastoral to convince a viewer visually that "this is the future". The overcrowded meglopolis of New York AD3500 is a much better setting.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Arrian
I figured that - you're a communist. An optimistic view on "human nature" is pretty much a requirement isn't it?

No, we just don't have a pessamistic view of human nature. We realize that selfishness is only one of many conflicting impulses in human motivations, and can often be overridden, even without social programming (like religion). Our willingness to charge into danger to save a loved one is just as hardwired and is the ultimate unselfish act, for example.