The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
Nov. 26th, 2006 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
A spaceman - a specialist in robotics - has been murdered. Lije Baley, a plain-clothesman of his age, combs the huge cave of steel for a lone fanatic, for a murderer - for the solution to an almost perfect crime.
One of the classics in the science-fiction genre, I borrowed my father's well-thumbed and ancient copy of this book (a 1962 reprint). Like much of Asimov's work, it's based around a mystery format (the murder of a 'Spacer' or space colonist in a camp outside the future steel city of New York). In practice though, it's a set up that Asimov uses to discuss the possible problems that humans will face in the future and as a result the solving of the murder takes something of a back seat and is solved in a perfunctory way. It's very much a product of its time - but whereas I'd always associated Asimov with those early science-fiction writers who had a rosy view of the future, I was surprised to see that his Earth of the future in a planet on the cusp of crisis.
People are assigned specific rankings within the society, with each rank providing its own privileges. As a C-5 rated officer, Lije Baley is entitled to his own apartment, with a sink basin (so he and his family don't have to use the communal facilties within their apartment block if they don't wish to) and special food rations (much is made of the fact that he can eat proper chicken from time to time, rather than the yeast food products that are the norm) and he can use special moving pathways and have a seat on certain transporters. His greatest fear though is of being 'declassified', a fate that happened to his father - whereby whole families are thrown to the fringes of the city, deprived of its benefits, prohibited from getting a job and forced to scrape a living from the inadequate soil. It's this fear that provides one of his main motivations throughout the book - if he solves the mystery then he will get a promotion to C-6, which will see his family given greater benefits. If he fails - specifically, if he annoys the Spacer colony in doing so - then he will be declassified and his family will suffer his fate.
The crisis that Earth is facing is a familiar one to those who've read Asimov - the population is growing too quickly for its resources and at some point will force more people into 'declassified status' and starvation. At the same time, the population is increasingly hostile to the fact that robots are increasingly being used to perform jobs within the society (Asimov illustrates this with a tense scene set in a shoe store) and they're hostile to the Spacers - human colonists who have returned to Earth but who live in separate camps and who are dependent on using robots in the space colonies.
Set against this backdrop is the murder of a Spacer roboticist within the separate Spacer camp. With access to the camp heavily controlled and the carrying of weapons strictly prohibited, solving the murder is further hampered by the fact that the Spacers believe it could only have been an Earthman who did it. Fortunately, the Spacers have insisted that Lije have a partner to help him, the only problem is that this partner is R. Daneel Olivaw with the R standing for Robot and unlike the obviously mechanical looking robots on Earth, R. Daneel looks only too human ...
As I said, the mystery itself is dealt with in a perfunctory way because Asimov is not interested in producing a good mystery so much as he wants to explore the likely problems of the future. Indeed, the investigation is developed in such a way to reveal the ulterior motive that the Spacers had in assigning a robot to Lije, which is really a last ditch effort to see whether Lije's natural hostility and suspicion of robots can be countered so that he comes to realise that in using robots more, Earth can solve its problems by recolonising space. The reasoning is that if Lije can be converted to that viewpoint then the Medievalists - an underground group leading anti-robot and anti-Spacer protests - can be converted too.
There's a certain naivety to the text - Asimov is so intent on proving that his solution is the right one that he really creates straw men arguments against it. The characterisation is also at times rather strained. In particular, Asimov treats Lije's wife as the hysterical and foolish little woman (a woman who quite naturally gives up her job to raise her family) and the dialogue between her and Lije is stilted (as is the dialogue between Lije and his son). That said, there is enough to the story to pull you through and it's fascinating to see how people only 50 years ago conceived our future - as much for what they get wrong as what they get right.
The Verdict:
It's a product of its time, but an interesting one nevertheless. I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in science fiction because Asimov was one of the granddaddies of the genre and his influence is still felt today.
A spaceman - a specialist in robotics - has been murdered. Lije Baley, a plain-clothesman of his age, combs the huge cave of steel for a lone fanatic, for a murderer - for the solution to an almost perfect crime.
One of the classics in the science-fiction genre, I borrowed my father's well-thumbed and ancient copy of this book (a 1962 reprint). Like much of Asimov's work, it's based around a mystery format (the murder of a 'Spacer' or space colonist in a camp outside the future steel city of New York). In practice though, it's a set up that Asimov uses to discuss the possible problems that humans will face in the future and as a result the solving of the murder takes something of a back seat and is solved in a perfunctory way. It's very much a product of its time - but whereas I'd always associated Asimov with those early science-fiction writers who had a rosy view of the future, I was surprised to see that his Earth of the future in a planet on the cusp of crisis.
People are assigned specific rankings within the society, with each rank providing its own privileges. As a C-5 rated officer, Lije Baley is entitled to his own apartment, with a sink basin (so he and his family don't have to use the communal facilties within their apartment block if they don't wish to) and special food rations (much is made of the fact that he can eat proper chicken from time to time, rather than the yeast food products that are the norm) and he can use special moving pathways and have a seat on certain transporters. His greatest fear though is of being 'declassified', a fate that happened to his father - whereby whole families are thrown to the fringes of the city, deprived of its benefits, prohibited from getting a job and forced to scrape a living from the inadequate soil. It's this fear that provides one of his main motivations throughout the book - if he solves the mystery then he will get a promotion to C-6, which will see his family given greater benefits. If he fails - specifically, if he annoys the Spacer colony in doing so - then he will be declassified and his family will suffer his fate.
The crisis that Earth is facing is a familiar one to those who've read Asimov - the population is growing too quickly for its resources and at some point will force more people into 'declassified status' and starvation. At the same time, the population is increasingly hostile to the fact that robots are increasingly being used to perform jobs within the society (Asimov illustrates this with a tense scene set in a shoe store) and they're hostile to the Spacers - human colonists who have returned to Earth but who live in separate camps and who are dependent on using robots in the space colonies.
Set against this backdrop is the murder of a Spacer roboticist within the separate Spacer camp. With access to the camp heavily controlled and the carrying of weapons strictly prohibited, solving the murder is further hampered by the fact that the Spacers believe it could only have been an Earthman who did it. Fortunately, the Spacers have insisted that Lije have a partner to help him, the only problem is that this partner is R. Daneel Olivaw with the R standing for Robot and unlike the obviously mechanical looking robots on Earth, R. Daneel looks only too human ...
As I said, the mystery itself is dealt with in a perfunctory way because Asimov is not interested in producing a good mystery so much as he wants to explore the likely problems of the future. Indeed, the investigation is developed in such a way to reveal the ulterior motive that the Spacers had in assigning a robot to Lije, which is really a last ditch effort to see whether Lije's natural hostility and suspicion of robots can be countered so that he comes to realise that in using robots more, Earth can solve its problems by recolonising space. The reasoning is that if Lije can be converted to that viewpoint then the Medievalists - an underground group leading anti-robot and anti-Spacer protests - can be converted too.
There's a certain naivety to the text - Asimov is so intent on proving that his solution is the right one that he really creates straw men arguments against it. The characterisation is also at times rather strained. In particular, Asimov treats Lije's wife as the hysterical and foolish little woman (a woman who quite naturally gives up her job to raise her family) and the dialogue between her and Lije is stilted (as is the dialogue between Lije and his son). That said, there is enough to the story to pull you through and it's fascinating to see how people only 50 years ago conceived our future - as much for what they get wrong as what they get right.
The Verdict:
It's a product of its time, but an interesting one nevertheless. I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in science fiction because Asimov was one of the granddaddies of the genre and his influence is still felt today.
