The Complete Robot
The complete collection of Isaac Asimov’s classic Robot stories. In these stories, Asimov creates the Three Laws of Robotics and ushers in the Robot Age – when Earth is ruled by master-machines and when robots are more human than mankind. The Complete Robot is the ultimate collection of timeless, amazing and amusing robot short stories from the greatest science fiction writer of all time, offering golden insights into robot thought processes. Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics were programmed into real computers thirty years ago at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – with surprising results. Readers of today still have many surprises in store… A Boy's Best Friend Sally Someday Some Immobile Robots Point of View Think! True Love Some Metallic Robots Robot AL-76 Goes Astray Victory Unintentional Stranger in Paradise Light Verse Segregationist Robbie Some Humanoid Robots Let's Get Together Mirror Image The Tercentenary Incident Powell and Donovan First Law Runaround Reason Catch That Rabbit Susan Calvin Liar! Satisfaction Guaranteed Lenny Galley Slave Little Lost Robot Risk Escape! Evidence The Evitable Conflict Feminine Intuition Two Climaxes —That Thou Art Mindful of Him! The Bicentennial Man
Stats for nerds
5recommend
8mentions
7people
2010–2024years
75% recommend25% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The Complete Robot has a lot of stuff about this and it is interesting. The person above I would argue is flat wrong about the three laws.
Asimov wrote his robot short stories in which the three laws played a primary role at a time when robot as Frankenstein's monster was the norm. His short stories attempted to create a more positive optimistic note about how humans and robots could collaborate. The three laws were a way to make it crystal clear that robots could not hurt us, by rule. And the fun was then imagining all the unexpected ways that psychologically that might play out. But in the short stories the robots never actually hurt anyone although they often caused a lot of frustration and fear.
If anything the three laws seemed to show the inate fear of humans to the unknown. The laws were completely impossible to circumvent and people knew this ... And yet they remained staunchly opposed to having robots on earth. Completely illogical.
Anyways, looking at the way LLMs are playing out it seems to me Asimov was wrong. It is quite the opposite. Humans seem to have no fear of robots hurting them, and as a matter of fact seem to get frustrated when a robot isn't allowed to cave their head in with their super human strength when asked (metaphorically).
- 1. The Body Keeps the Score (Bessel van der Kolk);
2. CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (Peter Walker);
3. Whole Again (Jackson McKenzie);
4. The Complete Robot (Isaac Asimov);
5. Outliers: The Science of Success (Malcolm Gladwell);
6. The Compound Effect (Darren Hardy).
- Farmer in the Sky by Robert Heinlein [1]
The Complete Robot by Isaac Asimov [2]
The Wrong Unit [3] wasn't a bad little humorous tale.
Pretty much anything by Timothy Zahn (sans Star Wars novelisations) [4] or Robert Sawyer [5] floats my boat.
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North [6]
Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard by Lawrence M. Schoen [7] made me care about sentient elephants.
Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi [8] is very funny. Audiobook version narrated by Wil Wheaton.
Of ones already mentioned:
The Bobiverse was surprisingly good (including the audiobook version).
The Expanse is good.
With regards to Dune, there are some like myself who only ever liked the first book in the series. (Also there is a good audiobook version out there.)
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and sequels are great world building and characters, although the plots seem to meander about with not too much purpose.
The Martian is great.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50851.Farmer_in_the_Sky
[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50091.The_Complete_Robot
[3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30959279-the-wrong-unit
[4] https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/12479.Timothy_Zahn
[5] https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/25883.Robert_J_Sawyer
[6] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18295861-the-first-fifte...
[7] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25667916-barsk
[8] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11167622-fuzzy-nation
- The Complete Robot by Issac Azimov.
Well actually, I couldn't decide between "I-Robot" and "The rest of the robots", but luckily there's a compendium with them both in.
- My top three would be:
Dune by Frank Herbert (only the first book, dislike the rest of the series)
Farmer in the Sky by Robert Heinlein
The Crysalids by John Wyndham
I've probably read these three books at least twice a decade since the 80s when I was a teenager.
The Complete Robot from Isaac Asimov would be a close forth.
The Tripod Trilogy by John Christopher would be fifth on the list. Hadn't read since a teenager, but about ten years ago tracked down copies of them (and the prequel) and it was delightful to reread.
- Complete Robot by Isaac Asimov
When frustrated by technology, it's pretty cool to read some things in this collection of short stories and think "We're actually in the future. We just aren't great at making robots walk yet."
