Book Review Revisited

The other day I wrote about reading Robot Dreams by Isaac Asimov. But never commented on any of the writings that were in it. So here goes. There were 21 short stories covering a variety of subjects. Some themes tied together many of the stories. For instance besides robots, there was multivac, a mega-computer. Then there was Susan Collins, later Susan Calvin. She was in the first two stories and the final. Now, on to a few stories.

Little Lost Robot was a story about a robot that had been modified, eliminating one of the three laws governing robots, which might have lead to a problem. Susan solved the dilemma of finding which robot had been modified.

Hostess was a story about a scientist hosting an alien researching a problem on Earth that ultimately leads to it’s death and here figuring out why her husband married her.

Sally was a story about self-driving cars, one of which was named Sally.

Strikebreaker is about a sanitary worker on a distant planet who is shunned as though he was a lower caste and what happens when a visiting scientist solves the problem and breaks the strike.

The Machine that won the war was an interesting story about multivac and how it won a war for earth.

The Martian Way was perhaps one of my favorites. It involved getting water to Mars, Martian scavengers who collected and recycled booster rocket segments in the space between Mars and Earth. Then Earth decided to reduce the amount of water being sent to Mars and the solution that the scavengers had for dealing with that.

Light Verse was a story about a writer/artist and her robots, several of which are flawed, but not dangerous. The story takes a deadly turn when a visiting scientist who admires her art “fixes” her favorite robot, thus destroying her art.

The Feeling of Power was about a man in the far future who could add, subtract, multiply and divide – all mathematical abilities long lost by humans.

The Ugly Boy was about a very young neanderthal child who was brought into the future for study and the nurse who worked with him. This was also a favorite story for me.

So, there it is. A recommended book, as are all of Asimov’s.

More later…