The Caves of Steel

OK, I had finished a couple of Zola's books and for a change of scenery, I have decided to go with the robots series of Isaac Asimov... The conclusion (and having read the Foundation series, I should have known) is that I'm hooked again and I feel I won't be able to stop until I've read all books in the series ;) Well, as a precaution, I had bought all the volumes anyway :D

Soooo we are on an overpopulated Earth, and people crowd in Cities (capital C), huge caves of steel where they live bare lives and are awarded small privileges or a little comfort as they go up in the social ladder. Society revolves around civism and a precise organization to support its own weight, and no more on money and individualism. In space, man has spread to 50 planets and the Spacers live, on the contrary, quite few on their planets, scrupulous on their privacies, controlling births and immigration tightly. Spacers live with robots around them; Earthmen don't and most of them don't like robots, a large portion of the population called medievalists even dream of a return to Earth.

Elijah Baley lives in New York City, a plain-clothes detective. A Spacer has been murdered in Spacetown, the place where Spacers can live on Earth, and "Lije" is in charge of the investigation, forced by the Spacers to take R. Daneel Olivaw as a partner... R. standing for robot of course.

I don't want to go into the story in details (because it's so great I won't be able to make it short...) so I'll just write my main impressions.
The biggest thing for me is that, just like he did in Foundation, or like Herbert did in Dune, Asimov does both the big and the small things:

• The murder investigation involves from 5 to 10 characters but the "experience" encompasses billions,
• The whole action takes place in the City of New York and in Spacetown but its output will send light-years away,
• The story rune for three days but it's vision will endure for centuries,
• It looks like it's going to be yet another crime novel but turns out to be more about the future of humanity than a simple crime.

Then there's the science-fiction universe of Asimov is of course very coherent and leaves me wondering where he gets all his ideas... The Cities, the caves, the yeast, the power/energy, all the anecdotes surrounding the robots, the Spacers, medievalists, fear of the open air... When I read such an incredible book, that emanates such mastery, I wonder how it is people read such things that are published nowadays...

OK, so this book is awesome and I’m now going to read the sequel. Yippee!