The Caves of Steel
In the future you will walk down the crowded streets of New York City not knowing if the bodies brushing past you are humans or androids. With tensions already mounting between humans and robots, the murder of a Spacer must be handled in a politically-correct fashion so Detective Elijah Baley is assigned a robot partner. Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw become like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Law & Order s Detectives Lennie Brisco and Ed Green, and Training Day s Detective Alonzo Harris and Officer Jake Hoyt disparate partners who must work together to solve a crime. The only problem is, Baley doesn't trust anyone not his boss, not his wife, and certainly not his robot partner.
Stats for nerds
20recommend
69mentions
61people
2008–2026years
29% recommend71% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Caves of steel by Asimov my favorite recently. Super easy and enjoyable read.
- Nunquam by Lawrence Durrell. Not generally heard of because you have to read Tunc first which is not science fiction. Both are great and stylistic masterpieces. Numquam is my favorite robot book along with Caves of Steel.
- I'm not sure I know of any that are similar to the 3 Body Problem that don't involve space. But if you're just asking about SF in general...
Spin, which I mentioned above, takes place entirely on Earth. But it's definitely at least somewhat "space-related" in terms of its plot.
Caves of Steel by Asimov is a certified classic who-dunnit in a far-future underground New York City. If you're interested in golden age scifi at all, this is a great one to check out.
Anathem by Neal Stephenson is one of my favorite books of all time. It has a tiny bit of space in it, but the whole book pretty much takes place on a single planet.
Permutation City by Greg Egan is all about computer-simulated consciousness. Thought-provoking but also a bit horrifying.
I also love Fine Structure by qntm (author of Lena[0]). Though it's a bit rough around the edges, I find that every time I pick it up to re-read it, I can't put it down until I'm done.
Those are just some ones I personally like. There's more I could list, but SF is a very wide genre and I have my biases — you should check out /r/printSF for some more broad recommendations maybe.
- Try his short stories collection. They are some of the best I've ever read. Also if you're looking for a longer novel, try Caves of Steel series. Out of all his novels I read, this stood out the most for me.
- Asimov in "The Caves of Steel"; Earth has a huge population that lives in huge cities, therefore it needs powerful computers as it has to track/police its massive population. Asimov guessed in 1953 that computers are a surveillance tool!
"R. Daneel came to his desk with a sheaf of papers. "And those are?" asked Baley. "A list of men and women who might belong to a Medievalist organization." "How many does the list include?" "Over a million," said R. Daneel. "These are just part of them." "Do you expect to check them all, Daneel?" "Obviously that would be impractical, Elijah." .... Baley said, abruptly, "How did you get your list?" "It was a machine that did it for me. Apparently, one sets it for a particular type of offense and it does the rest. I let it scan all disorderly conduct cases involving robots over the past twenty-five years. Another machine scanned all City newspapers over an equal period for the names of those involved in unfavorable statements concerning robots or men of the Outer Worlds. It is amazing what can be done in three hours. The machine even eliminated the names of non-survivors from the lists." "You are amazed? Surely you've got computers on the Outer Worlds?" "Of many sorts, certainly. Very advanced ones. Still, none are as massive and complex as the ones here. You must remember, of course, that even the largest Outer World scarcely has the population of one of your Cities and extreme complexity is not necessary."
- > "On very busy or very long escalators, standing is probably faster for everyone. "
How so? I don't see how an escalator could possibly be slower than everybody standing (discounting the possibility of somebody actually walking backwards.)
> "Or maybe multi-lane, variable speed walking escalators, but I guess those are sci-fi... "
I've badly wanted to try that ever since I read Caves of Steel. It sounds terrifying but exhilarating.
