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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780553293401
ISBN number: 0553293400
Label: Spectra
Manufacturer: Spectra
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: December 01, 1991
Publishing house: Spectra
Release Date: November 01, 1991
Sale Popularity Level: 11096
Studio: Spectra
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Product Description:
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. Isaac Asimov's Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together. Like most people left behind on an over-populated Earth, New York City police detective Elijah Baley had little love for either the arrogant Spacers or their robotic companions. But when a prominent Spacer is murdered under mysterious circumstances, Baley is ordered to the Outer Worlds to help track down the killer. The relationship between Life and his Spacer superiors, who distrusted all Earthmen, was strained from the start. Then he learned that they had assigned him a partner: R. Daneel Olivaw. Worst of all was that the 'R' stood for robot--and his positronic partner was made in the image and likeness of the murder victim!
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Rated by buyers 
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This is one of the few science fiction books I've read, and I only decided to do so after it was the selected read for a book group on another Web site. To my surprise, I enjoyed the novel immensely.
In a futuristic, severely over-populated New York City, a rigid class system dictates how and where people may dine and bathe, the city is built-up to such an extent that people never go outside, and humans' relationships with those from other planets ("Spacers") and robots are strained.
Since humans resist robot technology and are seen as inferior by "Spacers," Elijah Baley is presented with a unique set of challenges when he is partnered with robot R. Daneel to solve the murder of a high-ranking "Spacer." Baley's career and the well-being of his family are at stake as he and R. Daneel rush to solve the crime.
As others mentioned, the book does show its age and has some religious undertones that don't always seem to fit into the story. As someone who is new to the genre, however, I enjoyed reading about the world Asimov created, and the mystery kept me guessing. For some reason, I was expecting the book to be dry, but I found it to be a fun read!
Rated by buyers 
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I started reading Isaac Asimov when I was eight years old (mostly because my father enjoyed the books). Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun are both books everyone should read. They are Sci Fi , mysteries, and detective stories all rolled into two books. I rate them each as most excellent.
I will continue to re-read these two over the years and with grest enjoyment.
Frances J. Jessup, eclectic reader
Rated by buyers 
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When Stanislaw Lem famously castigated American SF writers for the very low quality of their books, it could well have been books like this one that he had in mind. This is not to say that there aren't many good SF writers both before and after Lem's attack, but there is a lot of justice to his comments. Far too many SF novels have only half-sketched characters, dialogues that are more like rough drafts than finished products and prose that can often be more than slightly embarrassing. This is true even with a legitimate genius like Philip K. Dick, who because he was writing for the word and not for history, left many of his books only slightly finished. I'm being very generous in giving this three stars and I am doing that because Asimov does deserve credit for helping to bring the robot back into popular imagination during the 1950s. Through his short stories and novels he helped established some ground rules for the writing about robots, most famously his rules of robotics. Asimov was somewhat better off financially than was Dick, but ultimately he also wrote for publication more than for perfection. And publishing books at the rate of around ten a year as an adult meant that taking time to polish and refine them was a luxury he could not afford.
But on literary grounds, this novel is a mess. It is a mixed hybrid, a detective novel masquerading as a SF novel. It is more successful as SF than as a mystery. The model for the detective seems to come far more from Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen than Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. This is too bad, since the latter might have meant a take on things closer to BLADE RUNNER. There is nothing of film noir in this novel. There is just some cop solving a crime. But it isn't a very interesting crime and the mystery isn't very mysterious. And the way the cop Lije Baley keeps jumping forcefully to outrageous conclusions (on two different occasions he leaps to accusing two different people of murder without coming anywhere close to assembling and testing all the evidence).
Much of the dialogue is just impossible to take. Anyone doubting me should just endeavor to read any of it out loud. I suspect that Asimov wrote down dialogue only once, not to reread it or rewrite it later. Even if he did look at the draft a second time, he clearly did not lavish much attention on it.
The robot Daneel Olivaw is an interesting early fictional robot. Artificial people had, of course, been seen before. In fact, the book widely considered the very first SF novel, Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, concerns the making of an artificial person. And the very first SF film was Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS, with its famous female robot. But despite these examples, only a few fictional robots appeared before Asimov began lavishing his love on them. In general, I think Asimov was better in writing about robots in short form rather than in novels. His best work on robots remains the short stories comprising I, ROBOT. Today it is perhaps hard or impossible to recreate the impact reading a story about a robot who could almost pass for human had for readers at the time. When Karel Capek's R.U.R. (the stage play that introduced the word "robot" to the world) was very first shown, theater goers were said to respond with shock at the appearance of actors portraying artificial people. But today, after Gort in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, Robbie (himself a homage to Asimov) in FORBIDDEN PLANET, Roy Blaty in BLADE RUNNER, Data in STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, and Six and Sharon in the new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, we are used to respond to a far more sophisticated form of artificial person. Daneel is curious, but coming after all these other creations, not terribly interesting or impressive. I think the most that we can say is that he must have been fascinating for readers at a different time.
I'm not sure whether to recommend this or not. Asimov has not garnered much respect from the literary critical community. The brute fact is that he is not a very good writer. Critics have not embraced him like them have Philip K. Dick or Kim Stanley Robinson or Stanislaw Lem or Ursula LeGuin or J. G. Ballard or Marge Piercy. So, I think I can say that if you approach this book as an experienced reader of great general literature, you will find this book to be a thundering disappointment. If you are exclusively a reader of SF and read little or nothing outside the field, go ahead. It isn't the worst book ever written. And it does have the historical importance of laying out one of the very first templates for writing about robots.
Rated by buyers -
A thousand years ago, mankind began the process of leaving mother Earth and colonizing the galaxy. Fifty planets have been now been colonized by thinly spread populations of hardy pioneering spirits - rough and ready types willing to work in hostile environments with robots as help-mates and partners - and it is obvious that mankind has evolved down two diverging sociological paths. The Earthmen - those who chose to stay at home in tightly cramped almost global city hives under the pressure of explosive population growth, an incredibly strict socialist regime and diminishing available resources - have grown timid of the slightest exposure to outside light, weather and even "un-conditioned" air. Robots, seen as competing with humans for jobs, the only meager source of status in this highly regulated environment, are despised and feared. While diplomacy and trade are maintained between Earthmen and Spacers, relations are strained and mutual distrust bordering on hatred has become the norm.
When a Spacer is murdered by a visiting Earthman, the governments on both sides realize that the crime must be solved quickly and quietly to prevent a complete collapse of diplomatic relations and an explosion of tension into riots, chaos, open animosity, perhaps even a war! The Commissioner of the New York City police force orders Elijah Baley, an Earthman detective who doesn't like robots any more than the subsequent guy, to check his emotions at the door and partner up with a Spacer robot, R Daneel Olivaw, to solve the crime.
"Caves of Steel", a classic novel from the pen of Isaac Asimov - one of the acknowledged giants of science fiction writing - can be enjoyed on so many different levels. On the surface, it's an exciting, tightly plotted and nicely conceived police procedural and standard mystery set in a fascinating futuristic setting with a completely unexpected ending twist. On a deeper level, it's a foreboding, grim, bleak look at the imagined social future of mankind unless population growth is brought under control and the problems of diminishing availability of food and energy resources are addressed and solved. Finally, "Caves of Steel" is one of the very first of an intricate series of novels that explores Asimov's now famous "Three Laws of Robotics", the behaviour of robots with positronic brains indelibly programmed with these three laws and the potential interactions of these robots with predictably unpredictable humans.
A combination of the best of hard and soft science fiction from one of the very best science fiction writers who sadly is no longer with us! Highly recommended.
Paul Weiss
Rated by buyers -
A fictional cop usually will get the partner that annoys him the most, to start with.
At least here, the detective type gets to work with a robot, not Eddie Murphy. Not everyone is a big fan of the robot, as it looks like they will replace people's jobs.
This ill-matched dueo has to investigate the murder of a prominent citizen of one of the colonized Spacer worlds.
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