I, Robot / Isaac Asimov

 

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I know that I read this back in 2011, but honestly this felt like the first time! I realize that I read quite a few science fiction novels quite rapidly that year, as I had just cancelled my cable TV subscription and was going a bit nutty as a result!

This time around, I started this book right after reading Asimov's Foundation. I'm not surprised to find similar characters here in what became the Robot series. Arrogant men, from Mr. Weston in the first story, to Donovan and Powell, the testers of new models of robots. (They are so nasty to each other that I wondered why neither of them sought different employment.) The expert robopsychologist, Susan Calvin, is of course an intellectual ice queen, not very attractive (at least by Asimov's standards, including considering being 38 as far too old). She is a psychologist, lower on the hierarchy than the male scientists. (The old stereotype that intellect and being pleasant looking are mutually exclusive.)

There is a rather insidious parallel with slavery in the human-robot relationship here. The robots on Mercury reply to Donovan and Powell with the response “Yes, Master.” The duo are outraged by a space station robot which doesn't instantly believe everything they say and refuses to obey their orders because it views them as inferiors. (Incidentally, this robot seems to have spontaneously created a religion with similarities to Islam, a religion practiced in America first by Muslim slaves, then by free African Americans in response to racism.) When Susan Calvin interviews a robot who witnessed an accident, it cringes and assures her that it would never allow harm to come to “a master.” As she questions the robot, she addresses it as “Boy.”

Basically, this book is a series of short stories about robots which are stitched together by the interview of Susan Calvin by a young reporter. The inspired idea introduced is the Laws of Robotics, the programming which states that a robot may not harm a human nor through inaction allow a human to come to harm. This principle seems to have entrenched itself into the science fiction genre, as I have seen it referenced in other fiction which includes robot characters (e.g. The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons).

One of Asimov's assumptions is that a sufficiently intelligent machine will automatically feel emotions, have ambitions, and acquire a sense of humour. Real life experimentation has proven we have a hard time programming the basic things, like facial recognition. At any rate, I feel like Asimov's robots are the spiritual ancestors of my beloved Murderbot and of the sentient AIs of the Culture universe.


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