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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780553293395
ISBN number: 0553293397
Label: Spectra
Manufacturer: Spectra
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: November 01, 1991
Publishing house: Spectra
Release Date: November 01, 1991
Sale Popularity Level: 28724
Studio: Spectra
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A millennium into the future, two advancements have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the Galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. On the beautiful Outer World planet of Solaria, a handful of human colonists lead a hermit-like existence, their every need attended to by their faithful robot servants. To this strange and provocative planet comes Detective Elijah Baley, sent from the streets of New York with his positronic partner, the robot R. Daneel Olivaw, to solve an incredible murder that has rocked Solaria to its foundations. The victim had been so reclusive that he appeared to his associates only through holographic projection. Yet someone had gotten close enough to bludgeon him to death while robots looked on. Now Baley and Olivaw are faced with two clear impossibilities: Either the Solarian was killed by one of his robots--unthinkable under the laws of Robotics--or he was killed by the woman who loved him so much that she never came into his presence!
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Rated by buyers 
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A thousand years earlier, mankind had split into two groups who now hated one another with a visceral prejudice born out of fear and a complete lack of cultural understanding of one another. Spacers, those who had seen their destiny in the stars, left earth with the assistance of positronic robot technology and colonized fifty worlds scattered throughout the galaxy. One world in particular, Solaria, was so thinly populated that the inhabitants had simply evolved away from the habit of personal contact. Birth was strictly controlled as a means of population replacement and achieved only through artificial insemination; child rearing was managed with the assistance of robots; communication, when it was deemed necessary at all, was via 3D holographic imagery; and personal contact of any kind, let alone sexual, was considered abhorrent. The taboo was so deep-seated it was capable of provoking nausea if the topic was frivolously mentioned.
So when a leading scientist was bludgeoned to death, the citizens of Solaria were quite incapable of even imagining that anyone other than the scientist's spouse was guilty. But since it had also been determined that she had no weapon, the only possibility that remained was that he had been killed by his own robots, a possibility that, of course, was absolutely impossible because of the three laws of robotics that governed all human-robot interaction. Solaria had no choice but to ask for Earth's assistance in solving the problem. Only an Earth detective would have the intuitive understanding of interpersonal relationships and what would prompt someone (or perhaps a robot?) to violence and murder. And it was well known from his recent performance solving the murder in "The Caves of Steel" that Detective Elijah Baley was the only detective who could stomach prolonged contact with Spacers and Robots. So Elijah Baley was on his way to the scene of the crime on Solaria.
What an incredible novel!
Asimov outdoes Agatha Christie herself in concocting a compelling futuristic version of the impossible "locked room" mystery whose solution is based on an understanding of the profound differences of three imagined but superbly developed cultures - two human and one robot - all of which respond in profoundly different ways to the same stimulus. He takes a page from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's brief and has his detective quote the famous aphorism about the solution, however improbable, being all that is left after one has eliminated the impossible. Asimov takes his obvious admiration of Doyle's work one step further allowing Baley to emulate Sherlock Holmes' personal vision of justice by indulging in a debate over the distinction between legal guilt and moral guilt and how the consequences for the two ought to be quite different. And, of course, in the tried and true fashion of cozy mystery detectives ever since the very first cozy mystery was written, all is revealed in a showdown drawing room setting with the master confronting all of the possible culprits as he reveals his subtle chain of logic and the now obvious solution.
But only a master of the sci-fi genre of the caliber of Isaac Asimov could turn what might have been a mere 200 page murder mystery into a deeply moving philosophical essay on his imaginings for the future and survival of humankind and even what it means to be human.
Highly recommended indeed for all lovers of science fiction, classic or contemporary.
Paul Weiss
Rated by buyers 
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I have read many of the thousands of words on this book. Most people seem to have read and enjoyed it, as they should. So I won't add too many more - that ain't necessary. All I will say is that, overlooking the relative thinness of the characterizations, after reading the book (and its predecessor) you might very well go back to the J. Watson / R. Sherlock Holmes stories with an enhanced perception.
Rated by buyers 
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I recently read CAVES OF STEEL and after being seriously disappointed in it I had hopes that THE NAKED SUN would represent an improvement. In fact, it did represent a somewhat tighter story and the protagonist Elijah Baley acted a lot less stupidly than he had in the very first novel, but all in all I found the book to be even less satisfactory than the first.
The problems with this book are numerous. One of the more serious difficulties is that Asimov took what was the most interesting part of the CAVES OF STEEL -- the cooperation between Baley and his robot partner Daneel Olivaw and largely ignored it. Daneel plays a relatively minor role in the book, Baley, who is all in all a pretty dull bird, taking center stage. As in the very first novel, Baley isn't much of a detective. His literary predecessors are not the Continental OP, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and Lew Archer, but Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. For some bizarre reason Asimov made the decision to follow the example of detective writers whose sleuths operated more by instinct and love to employ the technique of assembling all the key suspects before making his climatic announcement as to whodunit. As detective fiction, it is just horrible. Worst of all, Asimov violates one of the canons of such fiction: he withholds key facts, making it impossible for the reader to solve the crime ahead of time.
In addition to failing in developing his characters and engaging in a literarily inferior form of detective fiction, Asimov's book is flawed by absolutely absurd assumptions about possible forms of human existence. Now, in fairness to Asimov, he wrote at a time when the insane theories of B. F. Skinner (who attempted to raise his own daughter in a box) still held current. So in fact Asimov might just be judged a victim of his time. But even before the publication of THE NAKED SUN Harry Harlow (in a series of rather monstrous experiments involving rhesus monkeys and "monster mothers") proved how profoundly primates yearned for human contact. Asimov imagines what is not merely a different form of human culture, but one that is impossible, since it cuts so deeply at what is most fundamental to human nature, namely that we are deeply social creatures for whom physical and social interaction is crucial. Asimov tries his best to make conceivable a world on which people avoid being physically present to other people, but it simply is too silly. Sure, we could suspend our disbelief, but only at the cost of suspending all critical interaction with the text.
Added on top of all this is the fact that Asimov is simply not a very good writer. His prose is drab at best and in writing about characters he tends to default to extremely trite expressions. Someone says something to Baley and his reaction is to clinch his fists. It not only isn't very gifted writing, it reinforces a sense of superficiality running through the book.
I've now in the past month read the very first three novels I've ever read by Isaac Asimov. So far I'm baffled. I know that he is extremely famous and that he was a pioneer in many ways, but while I've found enormous pleasure in many early SF writers like Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Robert Heinlein, Hal Clement, Poul Anderson, Frederick Pohl, and a host of others, I honestly have found virtually nothing of value in Asimov's books. I'm not giving up yet. I'm currently trying to work through all the major books dealing with robots, cyborgs, and other forms of artificial people. I will subsequent finish THE ROBOTS OF DAWN and ROBOTS AND EMPIRE, in addition to finishing the last couple of stories in I, ROBOT. Perhaps my opinion of Asimov will change. But I can state with some confidence that CAVES OF STEEL and THE NAKED SUN are simply not very good books.
Rated by buyers -
I have always liked Isaac Asimov but I thought The Naked Sun excelled all other Asimov that I have read (except, perhaps, the Foundation trilogy.
Rated by buyers -
The Naked Sun by, Isaac Asimov, is a direct sequel to Caves of Steel (Robot City). Once again we see detective Elijah Baley called upon to solve a murder involving a "Spacer" (a human from an Earth colony on another planet) only this time he has to leave Earth to perform the investigation. He is reunited with his robotic partner, R. Daneel Olivaw although the relationship seems a bit more contentious this time around. The two meet on the planet Solaria where a leading citizen has been murdered with a good old-fashioned blunt instrument. Baley must overcome his fear of open spaces, resistance from the locals to meeting face-to-face, and the seeming impossibility of satisfying all the facts of the case before he can shed light on the mystery.
More than just a mystery, Naked Sun is also a social commentary of sorts. I can't say I found this aspect of the novel nearly as compelling as the mystery. Without giving too much away, the people of Solaria live in nearly complete isolation and loathe being in the personal presence of anyone, including a spouse or their own child. While this is plausible in a purely academic way given the scenario that Asimov put it place, it ignores many basic human instincts such as sex drive that are incredibly powerful and highly unlikely to be sublimated so completely. Still, as long you take it with a grain of salt, it is still interesting to read about this other culture.
The murder mystery in the book was very well done for the most part. It moves along well, introduces a number of interesting characters, and is suitably puzzling to both Baley and the reader as it unfolds. The ending wasn't quite as tidy as it could have been but I'll say no more about that for fear of spoiling the story for new readers.
The Naked Sun is not a perfect novel. The ending was just a bit off and the sociology is more than questionable. But these are quibbles, not crippling flaws. I would certainly recommend this book, though you should read Caves of Steel (and possibly I, Robot) first. If you've read Caves of Steel, and enjoyed it, odds are you'll find a lot to like in this sequel.
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