I, Robot (SF) - Isaac Asimov ***

Without doubt, I, Robot is a classic of science fiction. Dating back to 1950 it collects Asimov's early short stories about robots in the shared setting of the US Robots and Mechanical Men corporation, mostly featuring robopsychologist Susan Calvin.

I read these stories many years ago, but have only recently re-aquired them when I bought The Caves of Steel in a six book package. There's some clever work here, with almost all the stories featuring Asimov's famous 'three laws of robotics' and specifically exploring ways that the robots interpret these 'laws' resulting in things going wrong. It's still an interesting read - but I don't think it has stood the test of time as well as The Caves of Steel.

Don't get me wrong - it's still an essential part of the SF canon, and even the collective title is iconic (the stories originally appeared in magazines, of course). But Asimov's limitations with characterisation come through more strongly here. Several of the stories feature a pair of robotic engineers, Donovan and Powell, whose interminable banter I assume is supposed to be amusing, but in reality is extremely irritating. The only significant female character is Calvin, who is a caricature of an emotionless scientist.

To make matters worse, there are the timescales involved. In The Caves of Steel, we have a kind of reverse anachronism where they still use 1950s IT (and smoke pipes) three thousand years in the future - for some reason, this is just charming. But in I Robot there are humanoid robot nursemaids by the 1990s (their only limitation being they can't talk) and pretty much perfect robots a decade or two later (by which time we are routinely sending people to locations as far reaching as Mercury and the asteroids, and a starship drive is well under way). This somehow feels significantly worse.

Two or three of the stories here are excellent - and any not featuring the humorous pairing are good (to be fair, even in those the problems faced are excellent). But this is very much an exercise in setting up hard robotic psychology problems and finding a solution, with little consideration given to an effective narrative. I'm glad I read it again, but I'm not sure if I'd bother to re-read it in the future.

Paperback:

Kindle:

Six book package:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Comments

Luna: Moon Rising (SF) - Ian McDonald ****

I'm not the natural audience for this book. Game of Thrones l eaves me cold - and it's hard not to feel the influence of GoT (and a whole lot of Dune ) underneath a veneer of science fiction and the trappings of a South American drug cartel in the cod-medieval family power battles and chivalric details. There are even dragons (of a sort). I'd be really sad if the future did involve this sort of throwback feudalism. However, remarkably, despite this I found Luna: Moon Rising kept me engaged. The fact is that Ian McDonald can put together a good plot with intricate machinations, which is enough to carry the reader through what can be a bewildering collection of characters. The two page scene-setter saying who did what to whom at the start was useful, but I could have done with family trees for the main family as I was constantly forgetting who was who - especially easy as McDonald endows many families with characters with the same first initial (e.g. Ariel and Al...

Adventures of a Computational Explorer - Stephen Wolfram ***

Stephen Wolfram, the man behind the scientist's mathematical tool of choice, Mathematica, plus a whole host of other software products, including the uncanny Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine, is undoubtedly a genius of the first order. In this book, we get an uncensored excursion into the mind of genius - which is, without doubt, a fascinating prospect. The book consists of a collection of essays and speeches that Wolfram has produced over the last ten to fifteen years, covering an eclectic range of topics. Like all such collections, the result is something that lacks the coherence of a book with a narrative that runs through it, inevitably introducing a degree of repetition and a mix of interesting and not-so-interesting topics - but there's likely to be something to catch the attention anyone who is into computing or mathematics. One of the most interesting pieces is the opening one, where Wolfram describes being a consultant on the SF movie Arrival. He seems to hav...

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here. We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...

Search This Blog