I was TWO pages from the end of the book (..like, just a few minutes ago from reading to typing) and I was going to give it a solid "Meh.." review. It was interesting, good in parts but dragged in other spots. Good, but not great.. but then.. Asimov ties it all together right at the end. I shouldn't have doubted you Isaac. Wow.
Clearly you were building up to this the whole while. Maybe I should have seen it, but I didn't. I needed you to explain it to me.
The whole story is set up as a series of interviews with 80 something year old robotics expert Susan Clark. She tells the interviewer how we got from the beginning of robotics -in the early 1980's- to someplace totally different - in 2064. Asimov was a little optimistic on his predictions on our advancements. He saw us go from the Wright Brothers in 1903 to Chuck Yeager in 1947 so, naturally, he thought we would be mining asteroids with robots by now. It is odd to read a story that is set in the present time-span but is totally futuristic.
The basic premise is that we make better and better robots to make things easier and easier for ourselves. Our robot "servants" discover that the best way to serve us is to save us from.. ourselves.
It is a memoir of the person that best understands the robot brain - Dr Susan Calvin, robot psychologist. .. NOT Will Smith. I see no character in the book for Will Smith to have played. I have not seen the movie, but I imagine it is TOTALLY different.
introduction xiv
"Then you don't remember a world without robots, There was a time when humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now he has creatures to help him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to him. Mankind is no longer alone. "
p177
"Now a human caught in an impossibility often responds by a retreat from reality: by entering into a world of delusion, or by taking to drink, going off into hysteria, or jumping off a bridge. It all comes to the same thing - a refusal or inability to face the situation squarely. And so, the robot."
p197
Something broke loose and whirled in a blaze of flickering light and pain. It fell - and whirled - and fell headlong - into silence! - into death! It was a world of no motion and no sensation. A world of dim unsensing consciousness; a consciousness of darkness and of silence and of formless struggle. Most of all a consciousness of eternity.
Here was a tiny white thread of ego - cold and afraid.
