Read Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition) Online
Authors: James Gunn
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition) (26 page)
Both Asimov and Horace Gold, who could not leave his apartment for many years, would have enjoyed at least some aspects of life in the caves of steel.
But even the attractions or repulsions of the caves of steel are not at the heart of the novel. The reader wants Baley to accept Daneel, and that acceptance, in the final pages, rewards the reader's expectations with the glow of a resolution satisfyingly accomplished. The novel is, in a term later made popular in film, a "buddy" story like
The Defiant Ones
or
48 Hours,
or the pilot film for
Alien Nation.
The Defiant Ones
or
48 Hours,
or the pilot film for
Alien Nation.
The situation in
The Naked Sun
is the reverse of that in
The Caves of Steel.
Asimov wrote it out of an emotion other than his love for enclosed environments. He concluded his brief essay on his claustrophilia in
Nightfall and Other Stories
with the comment:
The Naked Sun
is the reverse of that in
The Caves of Steel.
Asimov wrote it out of an emotion other than his love for enclosed environments. He concluded his brief essay on his claustrophilia in
Nightfall and Other Stories
with the comment:
. . . sometimes twice in one week, when I feel I've put in a good day's work, I go out in the late afternoon and take a walk through the neighborhood.
But I don't know. That thing you people have up there in the sky. It's got quite a glare to it.
That glare is the sustaining metaphor in
The Naked Sun.
Where
The Caves of Steel
has the feeling of enclosure,
The Naked Sun
has the feeling of wide-open spaces. Where Earth is concerned with overpopulation, Solaria in
The Naked Sun
is almost unpopulated: it has only twenty thousand humans (but two hundred million robots), and estates can cover ten thousand square miles. Where Earth is concerned with competition from robots, Solaria is overrun by them, specializes in their production, and exports them to all the other Outer Worlds. And where the endemic psychological problem of Earthmen is agoraphobia, the problem of Solarians is agoraphilia. Solarians so love the feeling of virgin space around them that they seldom come into personal contact with each other. On Solaria a culture has developed in which "viewing" by trimension is the custom, where most Solarians cannot tolerate contact with other human beings, and where the rest, when contact is unavoidable, clothe every part of the body except the face.
The Naked Sun.
Where
The Caves of Steel
has the feeling of enclosure,
The Naked Sun
has the feeling of wide-open spaces. Where Earth is concerned with overpopulation, Solaria in
The Naked Sun
is almost unpopulated: it has only twenty thousand humans (but two hundred million robots), and estates can cover ten thousand square miles. Where Earth is concerned with competition from robots, Solaria is overrun by them, specializes in their production, and exports them to all the other Outer Worlds. And where the endemic psychological problem of Earthmen is agoraphobia, the problem of Solarians is agoraphilia. Solarians so love the feeling of virgin space around them that they seldom come into personal contact with each other. On Solaria a culture has developed in which "viewing" by trimension is the custom, where most Solarians cannot tolerate contact with other human beings, and where the rest, when contact is unavoidable, clothe every part of the body except the face.
Baley is summoned to Solaria to solve another murder. A Spacer, Rikaine Delmarre, has been murdered. It is the first crime of violence on Solaria in two centuries, which is why an Earth police detective has been requested. It is also a classic "locked-room" murder mystery in a special science-fiction sense. In that aspect, too,
The Naked Sun
complements
The Caves of Steel.
The Naked Sun
complements
The Caves of Steel.
In
The Caves of Steel,
Sarton could not have been killed by an Earthman because an Earthman could not have crossed the open spaces between New York City and Spacetown. A robot could have crossed the open spaces but could not have killed Sarton because of the First Law. Asimov solved the puzzle by having Enderby instruct Sammy to bring him the blaster across the open spaces and later gave it back to Sammy to return. It was an ironic confirmation of the necessity of C/Fe, the collaboration between humans and robots. The situation is similar in
The Naked Sun.
No murder weapon is found on the scene; Gladia, Delmarre's young wife, discovers the body and is overcome; and a robot who was on the scene and an apparent witness is incoherent and has to be destroyed. The situation is reversed, however, in that an outsider could have come across open country without difficulty, entered the house, and killed Delmarre, but would have experienced major psychological inhibitions in Delmarre's physical presence as well as having had to face Delmarre's neurotic reactions to his presence.
The Caves of Steel,
Sarton could not have been killed by an Earthman because an Earthman could not have crossed the open spaces between New York City and Spacetown. A robot could have crossed the open spaces but could not have killed Sarton because of the First Law. Asimov solved the puzzle by having Enderby instruct Sammy to bring him the blaster across the open spaces and later gave it back to Sammy to return. It was an ironic confirmation of the necessity of C/Fe, the collaboration between humans and robots. The situation is similar in
The Naked Sun.
No murder weapon is found on the scene; Gladia, Delmarre's young wife, discovers the body and is overcome; and a robot who was on the scene and an apparent witness is incoherent and has to be destroyed. The situation is reversed, however, in that an outsider could have come across open country without difficulty, entered the house, and killed Delmarre, but would have experienced major psychological inhibitions in Delmarre's physical presence as well as having had to face Delmarre's neurotic reactions to his presence.
At the end of the novel Baley gathers together the suspects in true formal murder-mystery fashion, though in science-fiction fashion they all are present by trimensic projection: Gladia; Attlebish, the acting head of Solarian Security; Jothan Leebig, Solaria's best roboticist; Anselmo Quemot, a sociologist; Klorissa Cantoro, Delmarre's assistant fetologist (a Solarian expert on the external development of embryos and the rearing of children to be proper, non-gregarious Solarians); and Altim Thool, a physician. And in proper, formal murder-mystery fashion, Baley recounts each of their motives and opportunities for the murder before he accuses Leebig. Leebig, it seems, had been friendly with Gladia by way of frequent "viewing." More importantly, Delmarre had been working with Leebig on robotics and suspected that Leebig had plans to conquer the Galaxy by means of robots. Leebig had planned to build spaceships with positronic brains that could be instructed to attack other ships under the assumption that those ships, too, contained only robotic brains. Delmarre had been about to reveal Leebig's plan. Leebig had murdered him by creating a robot with detachable limbs. One of these limbs had been used as the murder weapon and then reattached. (Another ironic example of C/Fe.)
The Solarians are aghast at this perversion of robot psychology (they are surrounded by robots and their safety and peace of mind is dependent upon the sanctity of the Three Laws of Robotics), and they turn on Leebig. Leebig himself crumples and admits his guilt when Baley tells him that an assistant is present at Leebig's house and is going to
put him under restraint. Leebig commits suicide rather than endure someone's physical presence.
put him under restraint. Leebig commits suicide rather than endure someone's physical presence.
On Earth, when Baley reports to Undersecretary Albert Minnim in Washington, Minnim points out that Leebig could not have killed Delmarre because he could not have endured Delmarre's physical proximity; he would rather die than be that close to another person, as, in fact, he did. Baley admits that Gladia actually killed her husband in a fit of anger (and during a temporary blackout of consciousness), but Leebig had arranged it. Leebig knew of Gladia's quarrels and frustrations with her husband, and instructed the robot to hand her one of its detachable limbs at the moment of her full fury.
Here, as in
The Caves of Steel,
the murder is the precipitating event and the structural element holding the novel together, but it is not the chief focus of the reader's interest. No one in the novel either knows or likes Delmarre at most they respect him as "a good Solarian" nor does anyone care about his death. The only real motivation behind Baley's desire to solve the murder is to save the only logical suspect, Gladia, from being accused of having committed the act. Motivations other than discovering the murderer everyone believes that it was Gladia exist for almost everyone else as well.
The Caves of Steel,
the murder is the precipitating event and the structural element holding the novel together, but it is not the chief focus of the reader's interest. No one in the novel either knows or likes Delmarre at most they respect him as "a good Solarian" nor does anyone care about his death. The only real motivation behind Baley's desire to solve the murder is to save the only logical suspect, Gladia, from being accused of having committed the act. Motivations other than discovering the murderer everyone believes that it was Gladia exist for almost everyone else as well.
Baley (who now has been promoted to C-6) has still other reasons for his presence on Solaria. He has been asked by Minnim to observe conditions on Solaria because Earth sociologists have predicted that Earth is too dangerous to the Outer Worlds for them to allow Earth to survive. The sociologists expect the Outer Worlds virtually to wipe out Earth within a century. But no Earthman has been allowed to visit the Outer Worlds. Consequently, Earth knows the strengths of the Spacers but not their weaknesses. On the other hand, Daneel (who is again Baley's partner, though he plays a lesser part than in
The Caves of Steel
) has been sent to Solaria to provide help for Baley and to give him the prestige of associating with a Spacer (Daneel passes as human). In reality, however, Daneel is there because the Aurorans (who are from a Spacer planet that has established a more rational relationship between humans and robots) are uneasy about political and technological developments on Solaria and concerned that Solaria might threaten not only Earth but other Spacer worlds.
The Caves of Steel
) has been sent to Solaria to provide help for Baley and to give him the prestige of associating with a Spacer (Daneel passes as human). In reality, however, Daneel is there because the Aurorans (who are from a Spacer planet that has established a more rational relationship between humans and robots) are uneasy about political and technological developments on Solaria and concerned that Solaria might threaten not only Earth but other Spacer worlds.
One major focus of reader interest is Solarian living conditions. Where overpopulation and social and psychological adaptations to it were a major aspect of
The Caves of Steel,
underpopulation and adaptations of the Solarians are the focus of
The Naked Sun.
Solaria, which was settled about three hundred years earlier by the well-to-do of a comparatively
nearby planet named Nexon (two parsecs or 6.52 light-years away), is fertile, temperate, and without dangerous animals. The settlers, who had felt cramped on Nexon as its population approached two million and a limitation was placed on the number of robots (robot birth control), resolved to limit human population on Solaria to what they considered the optimum number of 20,000 and allow the robot population to grow unrestricted.
The Caves of Steel,
underpopulation and adaptations of the Solarians are the focus of
The Naked Sun.
Solaria, which was settled about three hundred years earlier by the well-to-do of a comparatively
nearby planet named Nexon (two parsecs or 6.52 light-years away), is fertile, temperate, and without dangerous animals. The settlers, who had felt cramped on Nexon as its population approached two million and a limitation was placed on the number of robots (robot birth control), resolved to limit human population on Solaria to what they considered the optimum number of 20,000 and allow the robot population to grow unrestricted.
The consequence of huge estates, cheap labor, and trimensic viewing was the absence of cities. Solarians had fewer and fewer reasons for personal contact and gradually developed a pride in never seeing anyone directly, which eventually became a neurosis about seeing anyone. Human population is limited by assigning mates according to genetic considerations (some Solarians wear gene-coded rings). Children are licensed according to population needs and gene charts, then removed as month-old fetuses and brought to term in tanks. Some fifteen to twenty of them are received each month at what is called "the farm" and about the same number are graduated to independence after a lengthy period of education and training. They are raised by robots with human supervision and taught, in spite of their instincts for gregariousness, to prefer isolation to grow up, that is, into proper Solarians who can barely permit personal contact with their own mates.
This world allowed Asimov to play with two separate notions: the social customs of the Solarians and a further elaboration of robotics. Because Solarians do not like, and sometimes cannot endure, contact with other humans, they must learn to work with robots, and they have developed an unusual skill at it. They use robots to tend to the children (Solarians can scarcely bring themselves to touch, or even to mention, "the little animals"). Dr. Delmarre had even developed the ability to instruct a robot to spank a child, an action that could ruin a robot's positronic brain. Baley learns from Jothan Leebig the difficulties of building a robot capable of disciplining children. Baley suggests that throughout history the First Law of Robotics has been misquoted. It should read: "A robot may do nothing that, to its knowledge, will harm a human being, nor, through inaction, knowingly allow a human being to come to harm." The novel explores, as well, ways of using a robot to commit murder: instructing one robot to put poison into water and another to give it to a human; instructing a robot to hand a child a poisoned arrow; and instructing a robot to hand a woman its arm to use as a club when she is overwrought. In one episode, Baley orders Daneel to reveal himself as a robot to the other household robots so that Daneel will not interfere with Baley's plan, which Daneel thinks is too
dangerous and cannot permit. Baley wants to go about interviewing people in person.
dangerous and cannot permit. Baley wants to go about interviewing people in person.
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