Isaac Asimov has a very unique plotting style. His book rarely have any action in them, or more accurately all the action happens off screen. And in places it can be frustrating. A character leaps to a conclusion and the reader is wondering why this crazy character is spouting nonsense. Asimov then clearly and logically lays out all the information that led to that conclusion and the reader then understands. But, during that process, you just get the feeling that every Asimov character is much smarter than you. This is the feeling I had several times while reading The Caves of Steel. It’s a mystery mixed with science fiction in the form of robots, along with a lengthy digression on humans and space colonization. Overall a fun read. So, let’s see what happened.

In the far future, humans are split into two groups. A smaller group (nicknamed Spacers) have gone out an colonized several worlds. They use robots, have few diseases and a long life span. The majority of humans still live on Earth in giant mega cities (the titular Caves of Steel) where they rarely (if ever) go outside and do almost everything (shower, eat, etc.) communally. There is a small Spacer community on Earth that has tried to get Earth people to expand to the stars, but the Earth folks hate the Spacers and the symbol of the Spacers, the robot (especially humanoid robots). But now there has been a murder. A Spacer has been killed, most likely by an Earth person, in the Earth Spacer Community. To investigate the case, a Earth detective has been assigned a Spacer robot to investigate and solve the case.

Elijah (Lije) Baley is the Earth Detective. He has a wife Jesse and a son Bentley and shares the typical Earth view on robots. so he’s horrified to be assigned a Robot (R. Daneel Olivaw) to work with. But he grits his teeth and makes due as best as he can. During the case, Baley tries to do his best, but he jumps to conclusions about who did the crime twice and is basically slapped down with the truth both times. He grows as a character as he learns more about Daneel and the Spacers and that ends up being the key to the case (and the future of the human race).

There are three times when Asimov jumps to a conclusion out of the blue before walking the reader back over the clues to show how he got there. The plot is fairly straight forward and Asimov does a good job of presenting enough clues, that it’s not a complete surprise when the murderer is revealed. But the murder is just a McGuffin. It’s there to move our characters around and find out the true aim of the story, how will the future of the human race go, Earth or space. Asimov also does a great job showing a crowded Earth going underground into the cities and how the world has become more centralized/communal. The contrast and hatred between Earth and Spacer is the central conflict of the book and the impetus for the murder and it’s resolution will help push humanity to it’s ultimate resolution as well. It’s a well done book that is definitely out of date on several areas, but extremely far seeing in others. it’s one of Asimov’s classic Robots book and was later shoehorned into his Foundation series. Overall it’s well worth reading for the ideas more than the mystery. Recommended.