Starts slowly, but ...
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After a slow start with some longer stories, this volume gets into vintage Asimov with the classic short stories involving robots. After a while a set of stories involving the remarkable Susan Calvin emerges. Asimov says that he "fell in love" with this character. This volume contains some of the best of Asimov's work after 'Foundation'.
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They don't write them like this anymore
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I've just bought this again after losing my original copy. Asimov is, quite simply, the master of the robot story. What makes the stories so compelling is that whilst they seem to be about robots, they're really about how human beings treat each other, seen through the treatment of the robots as third class citizens. Parallels can be drawn between the treatment of the robots and the treatment of blacks in segregated America.
When I was younger, I wanted to be Susan Calvin (but hopefully better looking), the robopsychologist who is the star of some of the best stories. She's a great character, years ahead of her time. The collection also includes the original Bicentennial Man story. Don't bother with the dreadful Robin Williams film. Read this. It will break your heart without even trying.
What makes these stories most compelling is that they're set in the times in which we live now, Asimov's future, and it's interesting to see how much we have evolved. He wasn't right about everything, but computers have evolved in such a way that we're reliant on them, whilst resenting that reliance. In that he was completely right!
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The Master at Work
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Isaac Asimov is the master of the short story, revealing a whole new world in a paragraph. His robot stories are brilliant feats of imagination, and his Laws of Robotics have had a profound influence on the real world of Artificial Intelligence research. Do read these - they are wonderful.
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A must-read for any Asimov fan!
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Having read all of the Foundation series, I decided to try another of Asimov's works and this later collection of robot stories seemed ideal. Although a friend had told me that the robot stories were 'quite hard going', I found them to be most enjoyable and very thought-provoking. One of the best parts of the book is Asimov's introduction and the 'preludes' to each section, which give a real insight into the way the stories were written and how they came to be. The book is around seven hundred pages and contains over thirty varied robot stories, but the only disappointment I felt was when I came to the end of this compilation. This is a must for any fan of great science fiction.
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All the best of Asimovs Robot short stories.
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This book covers the very wide roll of robots in differing guises and their relationship with their human masters. Whether they are Automobiles, insects or planetary mining equipment the robots are constant and faithful. They go to extraordinary lengths to obey humans' instructions to the letter in context of Asimovs' 'three laws of robotics' which are programmed in to every robot positronic brain to protect us. Asimov persuades us to side with the robot against the contrary, ignorant, selfish bulk of humanity. Even those who, through intuition, intelligence and luck prevent potential disasters are deeply flawed as people. This book is a good introduction to Asimovs' 14 book 'history of the future'. It displays the authors ability to convince the reader that the worlds he creates are the natural consequences of the way people are and the sorts of robots we would create, not always by design.
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