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Monday, 21 November 2011 06:26 pm
(no subject)
The Asimov novel I mentioned recently finishing is The Robots of Dawn. Ideally, I would have read the two books that come before it in the Robot series, The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, but this was the only one I got as a gift and I didn’t think to remedy the situation before I started. Fortunately, callbacks to previous stories peter out as TRoD goes on, and at least I’d already read I, Robot and Foundation. (TRoD takes place millennia between the two and eventually sets a preliminary stage for the latter.)
Asimov probably started on this story by asking himself, "What if a murder mystery had a robot for a victim, destroyed as only a robot could be?" Of course, that in itself doesn’t spell excitement right away. Despite the victim’s nearly unparalleled resemblance to a human, it’s not legally a murder, and the harshest term you can get people to agree on tentatively is "roboticide." In fact, the only initial suspect is the victim’s creator and rightful owner, which would mean no crime at all. So why should we care what happened? The answer depends on the background, wherein the nearly 400-page story spends less time on robotics than on the implications of human nature.
( Such evolved complexity )
A cited critic says that TRoD marks a new high for Asimov’s character development, and I can see that. Everyone, including robots, to appear for more than one subchapter has a distinct persona. No one is entirely relatable, but all are pretty intelligent if a bit twisted. I sense one similarity in my writer geekiness to Asimov: We like to keep the important cast small, especially on a scene-by-scene basis, and focus on talking over action. (I was concerned about that when I started my current NaNoWriMo story.) It’s a little slow and repetitive, perhaps for the benefit of readers who had trouble absorbing enough information on the first go round, but I’ve matured enough not to find it boring.
Within 50 pages, I suspected a solution to the mystery. My mind wandered away from it and returned to it near the end. Turns out I was only vaguely right, and the real solution involves a briefly mentioned premise that I had pushed out of my mind for straining credulity more than the rest. Even so, Asimov handled it pretty ingeniously.
I could never be a mystery writer, and sci-fi is challenging enough as it is. My hat’s off to him for mastering both.
Asimov probably started on this story by asking himself, "What if a murder mystery had a robot for a victim, destroyed as only a robot could be?" Of course, that in itself doesn’t spell excitement right away. Despite the victim’s nearly unparalleled resemblance to a human, it’s not legally a murder, and the harshest term you can get people to agree on tentatively is "roboticide." In fact, the only initial suspect is the victim’s creator and rightful owner, which would mean no crime at all. So why should we care what happened? The answer depends on the background, wherein the nearly 400-page story spends less time on robotics than on the implications of human nature.
( Such evolved complexity )
A cited critic says that TRoD marks a new high for Asimov’s character development, and I can see that. Everyone, including robots, to appear for more than one subchapter has a distinct persona. No one is entirely relatable, but all are pretty intelligent if a bit twisted. I sense one similarity in my writer geekiness to Asimov: We like to keep the important cast small, especially on a scene-by-scene basis, and focus on talking over action. (I was concerned about that when I started my current NaNoWriMo story.) It’s a little slow and repetitive, perhaps for the benefit of readers who had trouble absorbing enough information on the first go round, but I’ve matured enough not to find it boring.
Within 50 pages, I suspected a solution to the mystery. My mind wandered away from it and returned to it near the end. Turns out I was only vaguely right, and the real solution involves a briefly mentioned premise that I had pushed out of my mind for straining credulity more than the rest. Even so, Asimov handled it pretty ingeniously.
I could never be a mystery writer, and sci-fi is challenging enough as it is. My hat’s off to him for mastering both.