Today is January 2, which is the birthday of Isaac Asimov (1920-1992). It’s the first of two birthday posts for this date. The other is Charles Beaumont.

Asimov needs no introduction, I’m sure. Some of his work is still in print, primarily the Foundation books (at least the early ones although I’m not sure about the later ones) and some of the robot stories. His other short fiction, both science fiction and mysteries, as well as his later science fiction novels that are stand-alones haven’t fared so well.

The Foundation series, along with some associated novels (The Stars LIke Dust, Pebble in the Sky, and The Currents of Space) are set in the far future. The robot stories were relatively near future at the time, a future that is now in our past. Not all of the robot stories directly connected to the main series which concerned scientist Susan Calvin. (Note to self: write an essay about Asimov’s choice of a female scientist as protagonist in the early forties.) Then, there were the novels featuring R. Daneel Olivaw, which were set a little further in the future and were a blend of detective and science fiction.

In the last few years of his life, Asimov connected the two series, bridging the near future Susan Calvin and R. Daneel Olivaw with the Foundation series. The wisdom of this decision could be open to question, but it’s been so long since I read some of those works, that I’ll refrain from comment.

He also cowrote some prequels to the Foundation series with some of the major science fiction writers of the early nineties. I’ve not read them and won’t mention them further in this post.

What I’d like to focus on here are the robot stories.

They were first collected in 1950 in I, Robot which was published by Gnome Press. That’s the cover above.  Some of them, especially the earlier stories in the book, are rather dated and don’t hold up well. Susan Calvin isn’t a character in the first few storeis. Once she makes an appearance, though, the quality increases. Remember, these are some of Asimov’s earliest stories. He was still learning his craft.

Asimov continued to write robot stories his entire career, although his production of them slowed down as he got older.  Some of the later collections were repackagings of the contents  of earlier collections with one or two new stories thrown in. An example is Robot Visions, shown on the right.

Asimov wasn’t the first science fiction writer to use robots, of course. Eando Binder (collaborations between brothers Earl and Otto Binder) had a series of stories that I think predate Asimov about a robot named Adam Link. And Clifford D. Simak wrote a number of excellent robot stories during his career.  I’ve not read the Adam Link stories yet. I do have a copy. And simak’s robots aren’t anything like Asimov’s.

One of Asiimov’s greatest contributions to science fiction was the Three Laws of Robotics, which he often sought to subvert in his stories by creating situations in which the laws came in conflict with each other. They have almost become a standard practice to include them in robot stories, whether te robots have Asimov’s positronic brains or not.

There aren’t may roboot stories being written today, which is a shame as I rather like the subgenre. I find it interesting to see what other writers do, expecially where the Three Laws are concerned. Do they assume their existence in some form? Does  teh qriter try to subvert them? Or does the writer ignore them entirely?

I have to wonder what Asimov would have thought about the robots we have today. There are many that are humanoid in design, but there are some out there. Robotics classes and competitions are routine in schools these days. My son took robotics throughout middle school and high school. I was a sponsor and particiipated to the extent that I was able. I just wish such classes had been available when I was in school.

And with the rise of artificial intelligence, I wonder how close we are to seeing robot similar to some of the ones Asimov envisioned three quarters of a century and more ago.What’s being done with robots these days is pretty sciencefictional.

It’s been a while since I read many robot stories, either written by Asimov or someone else. I’m going to try to include some of Asimov’s robot stories in my reading rotation this year.