I, Robot is a collection of short stories of highlights of the career or Susan Calvin, the robot psychologist with the United States Robots and Mechanical Men Company. The first story is early in her career, when the company made robotic nannies. Mrs. Weston had insisted that her husband get a nanny to ease the amount of work she had to do, but the robot did the job so well that the Weston’s daughter refused to spend time with other kids or doing anything besides play with the robot. Mrs. Weston sent the robot back to U.S. Robotics (all robots are leased from U.S. Robotics) assuming that her daughter would forget about it, but she moped and pined. So they took a month in New York City. Mr. Weston managed to get a tour of U.S. Robotics from a friend, and during the factory tour, the daughter’s robot was there on the floor. She jumped down, and was saved from being run over by a large truck by the fast action of the robot, and Mrs. Weston relented. However, when the daughter was fifteen, robots were banned from Earth as a result of fears by the unions.

Robot work moved off-world, to mining outposts. Donovan and Powell were U.S. Robotics’ top field testers, and they were sent on the second mission to Mercury. Shortly after arriving to the first mission’s quarters, they sent their one robot (Speedy, which they were testing) to get some selenium from the liquid selenium pools on the day side of Mercury, so they could repair the solar panels. However, Speedy kept circling around the pool. Without the selenium to repair the panels, they could not survive long, but they could not catch Speedy because it was a fast robot, and their spacesuits could only protect them against 20 minutes of the dayside heat. Eventually Powell realized that the selenium pool must contain some danger for the robot. The second law of robotics says that a robot must obey orders, but the third law prevents self-destruction. The SPD model was built with a stronger third law than normal, and the command given was not very strong, giving a weak second law, so the robot was caught in the middle. It would go forward to obey but then retreat to be safe, ending up in a fixed circle around the pool. Powell eventually set off for the pool himself, figuring that the first law of robotics (cannot do or allow harm to come to a person) would break the equipotential in the robot’s positronic brain. He was right, but he still almost died of heat exposure.

Donovan and Powell were then sent to an energy station in the asteroid belt, which beamed energy in concentrated beams to Earth, Mars, and other locations. They assembled a robot there, but the robot did not believe that they could have created him, since he was hard metal (and superior) and they were soft flesh. Eventually he came to the conclusion that his creator was the energy machine, the Master. Why? Because everyone on the station service it. He became the Master’s prophet, and convinced the other robots. This upset Donovan, and Powell a little bit. But after a solar storm hit, and they found that the energy beam had been kept directly on target, instead of wavering and frying various parts of Earth like they expected. The robot had done what the Master had told him through the readouts on the display that Donovan and Powell would have obeyed. So they figured he worked well enough, and recommended robots for other stations be sent there for indoctrination, er, training and then sent to their final location.

At their next assignment, the pair were testing a mining robot (Dave), who controlled six other less advanced robots to do the mining. Problem was, sometimes Dave would send the robots to marching in various formations, and then the work would not get done. Dave was apologetic whenever he was observed doing this, but could never remember what happened. Upon questioning one of the subordinate robots, it said it felt like an order was given, but before it could be received, it was given another order. After sever, Powell hypothesized that it had something to do with danger, so they engineered a cave-in at the mine. It ended up trapping them, and the robots, taking no notice of their instructions, began marching out of the mine. Powell took his blaster and shot one of the subordinate robots to get Dave’s attention, whereupon Dave came to their rescue. It turned out that it situations of high stress, controlling the sixth robot took too much extra processing power and put him in a weird loop.

At this point the interviewer asked Dr. Calvin if she had personally experienced a robot going bad on her. She said there was a robot that could read minds, called RB-34 (Herbie). Director of Research Lanning and Vice-Director Bogart worked on the mathematics of what was causing this ability, while Susan worked with him psychologically. One time while she was talking with him, he commented that Milton Ashe (also working on the project) was in love with Susan, having observed her thoughts of being wistfully in love with him. Susan went happily away, began being very friendly to him, and wearing makeup, perhaps inexpertly. Bogart, who strongly disagreed with Lanning’s hypothesis, was sent to Herbie for help with the math. Herbie turned out to be useless at math past calculus, but he did say that Lanning had put in his retirement notice and had appointed Bogart successor. Some time later, Bogart blew up at Lanning, who had a high opinion of Herbie’s mathematical abilities and had been recommending Bogart ask Herbie for help in the direction Lanning wanted. Bogart, said he knew he had been named successor and refused to do what Lanning wanted. Lanning took him down to Herbie for an explanation, but Herbie said nothing. Then Susan discovered that Milton was getting married to someone shortly, and obviously had not been in love with her. She storms down to Herbie. Since the first law of robotics says that a robot cannot let harm come to a human through action or inaction, Herbie had seen the emotional anguish of Susan (and the ambitious desire of Bogart) and told them what they wanted to hear to avoid hurting them. The story ends with Susan spitefully calling Herbie, “Liar!”

The next situation required Dr. Calvin herself, along with Lanning and Bogart to go to the station where the government was developing the Hyperatomic Drive. The problem was that a robot specially made for the project was missing; it had hidden itself among the 62 new robots just shipped. Calvin about lost her mind when she discovered that, at the government’s request, some robots were made for the project with a weakened First Law (work on the Drive was somewhat dangerous, and the unmodified robots would keep “rescuing” the humans and destroying their positronic brains in the gamma radiation). The 63rd had been ordered, very colorfully, to “get lost,” and had done that. In fact, given his robot superiority complex, he made sure the inferior humans could not find him. Interviewing the robots produced no differences between the 63. They tried dropping weights on top of humans (diverted by force beams), but all the robots jumped to save the humans, even when it was obvious they were not actually in danger. They tried a modified test where there was a high voltage cable between the humans and the robots, and the robots were told touching it would kill them (but in reality their weight would disconnect the cable). The expectation was that 62 of the robots would try to save the humans (the first law has higher priority than the third), but none of the robots moved to save the humans—apparently the missing robot had reasoned with the others that if the human be hurt despite their efforts (since the effort would kill them), they were not obligated to try. Finally Dr. Calvin put herself in the middle of a room, told the robots she was surrounded by gamma radiation, which would kill them, but in reality there was no radiation. When the weight dropped above her, only one robot moved. The 62 had not been trained yet, but the 63rd knew how to detect gamma radiation, knew there was none, and assumed the other robots would come to Calvin’s aid. They did not, because they did not know that there was no radiation. The 63rd attacked Dr. Calvin, and was it killed when the others turned on a short burst of gamma radiation.

Consolidated Robots was also researching the Drive, and they sent over five tons of mathematics, and a contract requesting that U.S. Robotics feed the questions into their thinking machine (The Brain). They would pay $100,000 (Asimov was writing in 1950) if no answer could be given, and $200,000 plus cost of construction plus 25% of the profits if there was an answer. Lanning and Bogart knew that Consolidated had their own thinking machine, so asking this question must have destroyed it, and Consolidate were seeking to destroy theirs, too. Dr. Calvin observed that the only way asking a question could destroy a robot was if it encountered a dilemma involving the safety of humans. So she carefully instructed the Brain not worry if that was the case and just reject the problematic paper. But the Brain accepted them all, and built a hyperdrive ship, although it was acting strangely, like it had a secret joke for the humans. Donovan and Powell were brought to test it. They found the ship had one way communication (headquarters to the ship, but not the reverse), had plenty of food (but only beans and milk), and no controls, just a meter showing distance in thousands of parsecs. When the Drive started, Donovan and Powell died, and went to Hell. When it arrived, they became living again. The equations caused the death of humans (the equations dictated that matter cannot exist during the jump), but it was not permanent death, so the Brain could build the ship (having been instructed that death was not a problem), but he coped with the unease this gave him through humor. U.S. Robotics sent the ship (which could only be controlled by the Brain) to Consolidated, who would likely get quite a surprise, collected their $200,000, and proceeded to develop the Hyperdrive themselves.

More recently was the mayoral candidacy of Stephen Byerly. His opponent, Quinn, was convinced that Byerly was a robot, and requested Lanning’s assistance in proving it. Byerly was a privacy-oriented prosecuting attorney, but the thing was, he was never seen to eat or drink anything in public, nor had he been observed sleeping. Lanning said that proof would difficult, and Dr. Calvin flatly said it was impossible, unless he violated one of the laws of robotics. If he did not, there was no way of proving it. Byerly took a bite of an apple when Dr. Calvin and Lanning visited him (but Calvin observed that this was not proof; if he was made to look human, probably there were provisions to allow this sort of thing), but refused to do anything publicly to prove he was human; apart from the privacy and civil liberties views, why not let Quinn hang himself? Quinn made a big fuss about this, and eventually a mass demonstration of people opposed to robots gathered outside his house when he was to give a speech. Despite advice to the contrary, Quinn made his speech, which could hardly be heard. A man in front loudly declared him to be a robot, and challenged Byerly to hit him. Bylerly invited him to the porch, whereup he taunted Byerly again, and Byerly socked him a good one on the chin. Byerly was elected without needing to campaign, and was elected to Coordinator of Earth in the next election. But Dr. Calvin had reservations about his humanity. Byerly’s “teacher” had disappeared for several months prior to the speech, returning unannounced. A robot could not harm a person, but if the other person were a robot, it would not be a problem...

The Coordinator worked between the four Regions of Earth to make sure everything went smoothly. Which it did, because, by this time, the Machines had been introduced. You feed all the economic and production data to the Machine, and it specified the optimum production values out. But several years in Byerly noticed that the Machines had slightly diverged from optimum in a few locations. Byerly interviewed the Co-coordinators of each region, but nothing seemed amiss, yet each region had one something unusual happen—a factory owner in India who had to close his factory because of competition but had not been warned of a new factory opening; the manager of the Mexico Canal fired for work delays, which caused a two month delay; a mining company that missed its quota and had to sell operations; and several others. Byerly talked with Dr. Calvin, who felt that the Machines were operating properly. The people and companies that had failed were all of the anti-robot faction. The Machines would not prevent harm coming to people, and since following the machines was created the optimum happiness for people, the Machines were creating disturbances that knocked the anti-robot faction out of economic power.

Asimov explores various situations in which the Three Laws contradict each other in the stories, within a framework of how robots affected human history, from off-world mining to running the world. Asimov seems to focus on the events that follow from an idea; the world is peopled and detailed enough to carry the idea, but no more. His writing is interesting, humorous, and uses a higher level of vocabulary than most, but his characters tend to be one-dimensional, with more action and reaction than deep motivation. Susan Calvin is more fleshed out, but she is kind of a tragic character, a cold woman, disappointed in love, not really liking people that much, but devoted to her work. The situations, however, are very ingenious, he does create some memorable characters, and he does a good job of telling history through individual stories.

Writing in 1950, Asimov clearly has a Modernist take on the future: the future is orderly, shepherded by machines. Perfection is achievable: the Laws never fail. Companies are trustable: U.S. Robotics never even considers making a robot army to advance itself, despite having what appears to be a monopoly on robots. Human conflict is caused by economic problems (not the desire for power that has created much of the conflict), and is therefore solvable by machines. In fact, human society at the end is effectively Communism (itself a Modernist idea)—the economy is definitely planned, except that the machines are running everything instead of people. It reminds me of the 1960s paintings of space stations. It is hard to paint gradients, which is what you get with cylindrical rockets and space stations, so everything looks a little flat. You cannot see any details, but the view is grand. Asimov is similar: the details are a little flat, but the view is grand, and a fun read.