The Science Fiction Review Books,Robot and Foundation I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

July 1, 2005July 1, 2005| StettinStettin| 0 Comment| 6:52 pm
Categories:

I-Robot Book Cover

    The Three Laws of Robotics

  1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

First things first, the Hollywood movie I, Robot (also reviewed) with Will Smith has only has a few things in common with this book of short stories. Keep in mind that the NAME was licensed to the movie studio after the script was already written. Scenes were adjusted to include the Three Laws, Susan Calvin, and Alfred Lanning. That is about where the similarities between the book and the movie end. There might be a few concepts stripped from some of the stories, but by no means is the film “based” on the book. To give the movie makers credit, they only say “inspired” by in the opening.

I, Robot is a collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov. Keep in mind these stories were mainly written in the 1940s then published together in 1950. These stories describe the basics of the Three Laws of Robotics and what can go wrong with them. Asimov uses the Three Laws as a literary device to create puzzling situations. Several of these stories involve Susan Calvin, the top robo-psychologist for the only robot manufacturing company, US Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. If anyone is interested in reading the Robot Novel series, this book kind of acts as a nice introduction to the basic concepts. As a matter of fact, anyone with any interest in Sci-Fi should read this book. I consider it required reading.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please prove you are a human * Time limit is exhausted. Please reload the CAPTCHA.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Post

The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray KurzweilThe Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil

April 1, 2008April 1, 2008| StettinStettin| 0 Comments| 2:22 am

The Age of Spiritual Machines Book Cover
A few months ago a co-worker of mine suggested that I read The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil. We had been talking about AI and he mentioned that this was an interesting read. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, as I had never heard of Kurzweil before. After a few Google searches I got the impression that he was a quirky futurist.

This book was published back in 1999 and by the end looks very much like science fiction. Many of his predictions are founded on some sort of research. I can see how they would have seemed a bit “out there” almost 10 years ago. I wondered how many of his predictions would hold up. Central to his philosophy is the Law of Accelerating Returns. In short, technology will continue to progress ever faster as time goes on. He displays an interesting graph of the exponential increase of computational power in various models of computers over time. The line is slightly curved upward, which represents an increase in exponential growth over time. So, according to Kurzweil computation is progressing exponentially exponentially faster.
(more…)

Read MoreRead More

Happy Birthday Isaac AsimovHappy Birthday Isaac Asimov

January 2, 2008January 2, 2008| StettinStettin| 0 Comment| 2:12 pm

Happy birthday Isaac Asimov! I started casually reading “In Memory Yet Green,” last month in my spare time. I would take it with me to places I expected to wait like the doctor’s office or something like that. It has been satisfying to finally get to know the author of my favorite science fiction series. According to this first volume of his autobiography, there is no real record of Isaac Asimov’s birthday. He was born in Petrovichi, Russia around 1920 and chose arbitrarily to celebrate his birthday on January 2nd.

Sadly, Isaac Asimov died of heart and kidney failure complications due to AIDS on April 6, 1992. He contracted HIV from a blood transfusion during a heart bypass operation in 1983. This link to HIV and AIDS wasn’t revealed until later when Janet Asimov published “It’s Been a Good Life,” in 2002.

It is a shame that such a talented author died before his time, but not before he wrote or edited over 400 books and countless essays and letters. I would have loved see how he continued his Robot and Foundation novels in the future. Hopefully I will find time to read some of his non-fiction this year, which most of his writing consists of. For a start, I received “Yours, Isaac Asimov: A Life in Letters,” for Christmas. I’m sure that it will be very interesting. If you haven’t read anything by Asimov, you should visit your local library or run a creative Google search. You’ll be in for a treat.

Read MoreRead More

The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal StephensonThe Diamond Age, or A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson

October 22, 2007October 22, 2007| StettinStettin| 0 Comment| 10:52 pm

The Diamond Age Book Cover

If one word could describe The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, it would be “surreal.” I think that this is one of the main reasons that it won the Hugo Award in 1996. The main setting for this novel by Neal Stephenson is in the middle 21st century Shangai, shifting briefly to other places such as Vancouver and London later on. Nanotechnology is heavily used at this time, especially in Matter Compilers, usually referred to as an M.C. Matter flows from the “Feed”, which comes from the “Source” of the raw materials used to create everything from food to household items. A Source is much like a power station, except that it transmits matter rather than energy. (more…)

Read MoreRead More