The Caves of Steel (2 page)

I first worked out the final form of the Three Laws, and used them explicitly, in my fourth robot story, “Runaround,” which appeared in the March 1942 issue of
Astounding
. The Three Laws first appear on page 100 of that issue. I looked that up, because where they appear there is the very first use of the word “robotics” in the history of the world, as far as I know.

I went on to write four more robot stories for
Astounding
in the 1940s. They were “Catch That Rabbit,” “Escape” (which Campbell called “Paradoxical Escape” because two years before he had published a story with “Escape” as the title), “Evidence,” and “The Evitable Conflict.” These appeared in the February 1944, August 1945, September 1946, and June 1950 issues of
Astounding
.

By 1950, important publishing houses, notably Doubleday and Company, were beginning to publish hardcover science fiction. In January 1950, Doubleday published my first book, the science-fiction novel
Pebble in the Sky
, and I was hard at work on a second novel.

It occurred to Fred Pohl, who was my agent for a
brief period at that time, that perhaps a book could be made out of my robot stories. Doubleday was not interested in short-story collections at the time, but a very small publishing house, Gnome Press, was.

On June 8, 1950, the collection was handed to Gnome Press, and the title I gave it was
Mind and Iron
. The publisher shook his head.

“Let’s call it
I
,
Robot
,” he said.

“We can’t,” I said. “Eando Binder wrote a short story with that title ten years ago.”

“Who cares?” said the publisher (though that is a bowdlerized version of what he really said), and I allowed myself, rather uneasily, to be persuaded.
I
,
Robot
was my second book, and it came out just before the end of 1950.

The book contained my eight robot stories from
Astounding
, with their order rearranged to make a more logical progression. In addition, I included “Robbie,” my first story, because I liked it despite Campbell’s rejection.

I had written three other robot stories in the 1940s that Campbell had either rejected or never seen, but these were not in the direct path of progression of the stories, so I left them out. These, however, and other robot stories written in the decades since
I, Robot
, were included in later collections—all of them, without exception, appeared in
The Complete Robot
, published by Doubleday in 1982.

I, Robot
did not make a big splash on publication, but it sold steadily, if slowly, year after year. Within five years, it had come out in an Armed Forces edition, in a cheaper hardcover edition, in a British edition, and in a German edition (my first foreign-language appearance). In 1956, it was even published in a paperback edition by New American Library.

The only trouble was that Gnome Press was just
barely surviving, and it never did get around to giving me clear semiannual statements, or much in the way of payments. (That went for my three
Foundation
books, which Gnome Press also published.)

In 1961, Doubleday became aware of the fact that Gnome Press was having trouble, and they arranged to take over
I, Robot
(and the
Foundation
books, too). From then on, all the books did much better. In fact,
I, Robot
has remained in print ever since it was first published. That’s thirty-three years now. In 1981, it was even sold to the movies, although no motion picture has yet been made. It has also appeared in eighteen different foreign languages that I know of, including Russian and Hebrew.

But I’m getting way ahead of the story.

Let’s go back to 1952, at which time
I, Robot
was just plodding along as a Gnome Press book, and I had no hint of any real success.

By that time, new top-notch science-fiction magazines had come out and the field was in one of its periodic “booms.”
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
appeared in 1949, and
Galaxy Science Fiction
in 1950. With that John Campbell lost his monopoly of the field, and the “Golden Age” of the 1940s was over.

I began to write for Horace Gold, the editor of
Galaxy
, and with some relief, too. For a period of eight years, I had written for Campbell exclusively and I had come to feel that I was a one-editor writer and that if anything happened to Campbell, I would be through. My success in selling to Gold relieved my anxieties in this respect. Gold even serialized my second novel,
The Stars, Like Dust …
, although he changed its title to
Tyrann
, which I considered awful.

Nor was Gold my only new editor. I sold a robot story to Howard Browne, who edited
Amazing
during
a brief period when it tried to be a quality magazine. The story, entitled “Satisfaction Guaranteed,” appeared in the April 1951 issue of that magazine.

That was an exception, though. On the whole, I had no intention of writing further robot stories at that time. The appearance of
I
,
Robot
seemed to have brought that portion of my literary career to its natural close, and I was moving on to other things.

Gold, however, having published one serial by me, was perfectly willing to try another, especially since a new novel I had written,
The Currents of Space
, had been taken by Campbell for serialization.

On April 19, 1952, Gold and I were talking over the matter of a new novel that was to appear in
Galaxy
. He suggested a robot novel. I shook my head firmly. My robots had appeared only in short stories, and I was not at all sure I could write a whole novel based on robots.

“Sure you can,” said Gold. “How about an over-populated world in which robots are taking over human jobs?”

“Too depressing,” I said. “I’m not sure I want to handle a heavy sociological story.”

“Do it your way. You like mysteries. Put a murder in such a world and have a detective solve it with a robot partner. If the detective doesn’t solve it, the robot will replace him.”

That struck fire. Campbell had often said that a science-fiction mystery story was a contradiction in terms; that advances in technology could be used to get detectives out of their difficulties unfairly, and that the readers would therefore be cheated.

I sat down to write a story that would be a classic mystery and that would not cheat the reader—and yet would be a true science-fiction story. The result was
The Caves of Steel
It appeared in
Galaxy
as a three-part
serial in the October, November, and December 1953 issues, and in 1954, it was published by Doubleday as my eleventh book.

There was no question but that
The Caves of Steel
was my most successful book to date. It sold better than any of my earlier books; it elicited nicer letters from readers; and (best proof of all) Doubleday smiled at me with greater warmth than ever before. Until that point, they wanted outlines and chapters from me before handing me contracts, but after that I got my contracts on my mere statement that I was going to write another book.

The Caves of Steel
was so successful, in fact, that it was inevitable that I write a sequel. I would have started it at once, I think, if I had not just begun to write science popularizations and found I enjoyed doing that tremendously. It was not till October 1955 that I actually began
The Naked Sun
.

Once begun, however, it went smoothly. In many ways, it balanced the earlier book.
The Caves of Steel
took place on Earth, a world of many human beings and few robots, while
The Naked Sun
took place on Solaria, a world of few human beings and many robots. What’s more, although my books are generally devoid of romance, I actually introduced an understated love story into
The Naked Sun
.

I was entirely satisfied with the sequel, and in my heart, thought it was even better than
The Caves of Steel
, but what was I to do with it? I had grown somewhat estranged from Campbell, who had taken up an odd bit of pseudoscience called dianetics and had managed to become interested in flying saucers, in psionics, and in various other questionable matters. On the other hand, I owed him a great deal and I felt rather guilty over having largely shifted to Gold, who had had two of my serials in a row. But as he had
nothing to do with the planning of
The Naked Sun
, I could dispose of it as I wished.

I offered the novel to Campbell, therefore, and he took it at once. It appeared as a three-part serial in the October, November, and December 1956 issues of
Astounding
, and Campbell didn’t change my title, either. In 1957, it was published by Doubleday as my twentieth book.

It did just as well as
The Caves of Steel
, if not better, and Doubleday at once pointed out I couldn’t leave it there. I would have to write a third book and make it a trilogy, just as my three
Foundation
books made up a trilogy.

I fully agreed. I had a rough idea of the plot of the third book, and I had a title—
The Bounds of Infinity
.

In July 1958, the family was taking a three-week vacation in a house at the shore in Marshfield, Massachusetts, and it was my plan to get to work and do a sizable chunk of the new novel there. It was going to be set on Aurora, where the human/robot balance was to be neither overweighted in the direction of the human as in
The Caves of Steel
nor in the direction of the robot as in
The Naked Sun
. What’s more, the element of romance was to be much strengthened.

I was all set—and yet, something was wrong. I had grown steadily more interested in non-fiction in the 1950s, and for the first time, I started a novel which wouldn’t catch fire. After four chapters, I faded out and gave up. I decided that in my heart I felt I couldn’t handle the romance, couldn’t balance the human/robot mixture in properly equal fashion.

For twenty-five years, that was the way it remained. Neither
The Caves of Steel
nor
The Naked Sun
died or went out of print. They appeared together in
The Robot Novels;
they appeared with a group of
short stories in
The Rest of the Robots
. And they appeared in various softcover editions.

For twenty-five years, therefore, readers had them available to read and, I presume, enjoy. As a result, many wrote me to ask for a third novel. At conventions they asked me directly. It became the most surefire request I was to receive (except the request for a fourth
Foundation
novel).

And whenever I was asked if I intended to write a third robot novel, I always answered, “Yes—someday—so pray for a long life for me.”

Somehow, I felt I ought to, but as the years passed I grew more and more certain that I couldn’t handle it, and more and more sadly convinced that the third novel was never going to be written.

And yet, in March of 1983, I presented Doubleday with the “long-awaited” third robot novel. It has no connection whatever with the ill-fated attempt of 1958, and its name is
The Robots of Dawn
. Doubleday published it in October of 1983.

—Isaac Asimov   
New York City

Lije Baley had just reached his desk when he became aware of R. Sammy watching him expectantly.

The dour lines of his long face hardened. “What do you want?”

“The boss wants you, Lije. Right away. Soon as you come in.”

“All right.”

R. Sammy stood there blankly.

Baley said, “I said, all right. Go away!”

R. Sammy turned on his heel and left to go about his duties. Baley wondered irritably why those same duties couldn’t be done by a man.

He paused to examine the contents of his tobacco pouch and make a mental calculation. At two pipefuls a day, he could stretch it to next quota day.

Then he stepped out from behind his railing (he’d rated a railed corner two years ago) and walked the length of the common room.

Simpson looked up from a mere-pool file as he passed. “Boss wants you, Lije.”

“I know. R. Sammy told me.”

A closely coded tape reeled out of the merc-pool’s vitals as the small instrument searched and analyzed its “memory” for the desired information stored in the tiny vibration pattern of the gleaming mercury surface within.

“I’d kick R. Sammy’s behind if I weren’t afraid I’d break a leg,” said Simpson. “I saw Vince Barrett the other day.”

“Oh?”

“He was looking for his job back. Or any job in the Department. The poor kid’s desperate, but what could
I
tell him? R. Sammy’s doing his job and that’s all. The kid has to work a delivery tread on the yeast farms now. He was a bright boy, too. Everyone liked him.”

Baley shrugged and said in a manner stiffer than he intended or felt, “It’s a thing we’re all living through.”

The boss rated a private office. It said
JULIUS ENDERBY
on the clouded glass. Nice letters. Carefully etched into the fabric of the glass. Underneath, it said
COMMISSIONER OF POLICE, CITY OF NEW YORK
.