ORBzine Book Reviews June 1999

This is a novel built up by extending the original short story [written 50 years previously]. The main part of the story survives in the central part of the book; the character backgrounds and introductions have been extended into a large prelude section, while a lengthy ending section has been tacked on after the original nihilistic climax.

Story;
Set on a world with multiple suns and a very complex orbit which means that the population only sees nightfall once in several millenia. But with constant exposure to sunlight, what will their response be when they see the stars for the very first time?

A 1950s detective novel with a difference; it's set several millenia in the future. Mankind as we know it survives in huge domed Megacities, the Caves of Steel from the title.

Fifty planets in nearby systems have been settled by the Spacers, descendants of Terran colonists who now live in a sterile, Federation-like environment.

A Spacer is killed in an Earth city, and the local police assign detective Elijah Baley to the case. He's teamed up with a humanoid Spacer android, R. Daneel Olivaw, to find the killer.

A timeless classic.

Rating: 85%

Detective Elijah Baley and the android R. Daneel Olivaw are assigned to find investigate the murder of another Spacer. But this time the murder was committed on Solaria, a Spacer world - and Baley must travel off-planet to find the killer. Not a nice thought for an agoraphobic, afraid to look at the naked sun.

The blurb on the cover of my 1950s version mentions Solaria; where Robots rule, and Earthmen live in terror, a sad example of a classic SF novel being marketed as trashy pulp.

Rating: 85%

Detective Baley and android Daneel are dispatched to investigate a third murder - but this time the victim is a human-seeming android like Daneel. The only suspect is Daneel's designer and Baley's friend - the man who insisted they investigate the case so he could be exonerated.

This book is a lot longer than the other two [Caves of Steel and Naked Sun], and very different - this could be explained by the 25-odd-years gap between the writing of this and the other two Baley books.

This book lacks the involvement and excitement the other two had; the extra pages seem to have diluted the quality of the book. However, it's still a pretty damn good book.

Rating: 70%

An oversized, bulky addition to the Foundation series which were originally a series of collected short stories.

Hari Seldon [mastermind behind the Foundation and the Seldon Plan in the original books] is a young mathematician who has theorised that it is possible to predict the future actions of large human populations - in efefct, the political future. However, the Galactic Emperor soon learns of this theory and wishes Seldon to work for him, so that the predictions are favourable to the Empire. Naturally Seldon objects with the idea of prostituting his mathematic predictions for political control, so he goes on the run.

Bulky book - a good long read or a tedious slog depending on how you look at it; since it's a post-Black Widowers Asimov story it's probably ghost-written too. Not as good as classic Asimov.

Rating: 70%

Four short stories grouped together in a single tome; there were meant to be 5, but Asimov died before the last one was written so only the outline was included.

This book takes place between Prelude and Foundation, and smooths over why none of the characters from the former appear in the latter [with the exception of Seldon himself of course]. The answer to this is obvious - but some of the final twists in the stories are quite good; the assassination story in particular stands out.

A deliberate move by Asimov away from bulky novels and back to short stories [and better for it].

Rating: 75%

The stories in this book cover several time periods during the early development of the Foundation, never featuring the same hero twice [they die off between stories].

The second part introduces the Mule, a powerful psychic warlord who conquers the Foundation.

However, the Foundation itself has no love for the Second Foundation either, and objects strongly to being manipulated by persons unknown ...

Series Overall Rating: 80%