I've been meaning to dive into Asimov's groundbreaking Robot series for some time, and finally got around to reading this first book last year. It's classic Golden Age science fiction, full of amazing possibilities, yet tinged with noir overtones that drive the action toward a solution I for one didn't see coming.
The earth of this future is full to the gills, with cities now stretching miles in all directions and completely enclosed from the elements. People living in these "steel caves" (the titular reference) are at once adjusted to this lack of freedom and yet resentful of the spacers who left Earth for the wide open space beyond.
It may sound like the setup to a contemporary distopia, and yet Asimov paints a more realistic picture than his darker counterparts by having all forms of reaction to this world: positive, negative, indifferent, and everywhere in between.
This range of human emotion is best expressed by the protagonist Detective Elijah "Lije" Baley. He's a classic hard-boiled crime fighter dropped into a future crowded city, distrustful of many and yet open to new ideas. He's not best pleased to get saddled with his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw to solve a spacer's murder, but he pursues his goal with single-minded ferocity despite a number of plausible red herrings thrown in his path.
The dynamic relationship Baley and Olivaw share throughout the novel paves the way for many successors to come, but still reads like a fresh invention. Like with any Asimov tale, the world itself is alive with discovery. The scene where these two partners dodge passengers along crisscrossing, multistoried moving sidewalks in pursuit of a suspect practically begs for a cinematic treatment, while the various levels of the steel cave are gradually peeled back one by one.
Incredibly, Asimov even avoids the usual science fiction fallacy of pretending religion will vanish like some exotic animal in the future. Not only do humans still espouse various beliefs in this brave and burgeoning new world, but such traditions impact the story in a climatic moment that offers hope not just for the protagonists but the world and its future.
Combining action, philosophy, a pinch of romance and a good mystery, Caves of Steel offers something for every level of science fiction fan. It's a genre classic that offers a foundation for things to come and yet stands as a great work in its own right.
This review is also posted on Goodreads and Amazon. I did not receive anything from the publisher or author for this review. The cover artwork was by Stephen Youll. The book is currently available from Spectra as a Paperback ($7.99) and via Amazon as an eBook ($6.83).
