In the far future, where everyone eats yeast, robots are taking jobs from humans, and the earth is massively over crowded by a population of 8 billion, someone important is murdered and our hero is called upon to investigate. A police detective Asimov clearly wanted to be played by Humphrey Bogart is forced to take on a robot as his partner while they investigate the murder of a robotics engineer. One thing leads to another as they follow clues, are fooled by red herrings, and finally reveal the identity of the murderer-all in standard murder mystery fashion.
The murder mystery is just a familiar framework that Asimov used to introduce the unfamiliar world where his characters live. Here we have a population that never leaves The City, rarely uses air travel, and gets around by the use of moving sidewalks. They have highly structured social rules for using the public bathrooms and dinning halls-and most personal interactions. They hate people from Space and they especially hate Robots. Most Earthers we see are narrow minded, stupid, sexist, and agoraphobic.
Issac Asimov was one of the giants of Science Fiction from the 1950s until his death in 1992. Like all Sci Fi writers, he got some things right and some not so right when it comes to his fictional futures. The Caves of Steel is a fun read, but it contain a number of things that were a bit jarring a little over fifty years after it was first published.
First off, a population of 8 billion is only sustainable if everyone eats fast growing yeasts-we are a bit over 7 billion now. Some yeasts have been breed for special purposes besides food-such as one that has a high fat content to provide lubricants for moving sidewalks. Rolling roads and moving sidewalks were all the rage in 1950s-60s sci fi, but are only seen now in airports. While the characters talk about yeast, they go into the Balance Room, where countless mechanical scales needed for yeast engineering are stored. A bit later we find a robot’s body in the Police Station’s Dark Room, where radiation has fogged the film. A bit later our hero uses a 3D projector that recreated the crime scene in such detail that vital evidence is found through extensive panning and zooming. And yet we still need film? We still need balances? There are no computers, but there are positronic brains and intergalactic travel?
The Caves of Steel is a fun read and Asimov can be forgiven for not guessing what the world would really look like in a thousand years, or even in fifty years. We don’t have to know what the real life of Hobbits are like to enjoy The Hobbit. The people in Caves of Steel are odd, but I still liked the book.
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