Robots and Empire

Last instalment in Asimov's robots series is the first where a human being is not the main character. Elijah died decades and decades ago, Fastolfe is dead too; Earthmen have settled many planets and these new spacers are called "Settlers". But the peace imposed by Fastolfe is now coming to an end and tension is growing between Spacers and Settlers.
R. Daneel Olivaw and R. Giskard Reventlov are now property of Gladia who received them from Fastolfe. The last time they saw, on a spaceship some 5 years after The Robots of Dawn, Baley made Gladia promise to always trust Giskard... She had never understood why but is now reminded of this promise!
On Aurora, Amadiro is brewing his long due revenge against Fastolfe and Earth, and young Levular Mandamus presents him a plan to destroy Earth. Meanwhile, on Solaria, inhabitants have disappeared, and robots kill humans!
Daneel and Giskard will embark on a journey with Gladia and D.G. Baley (a descendant of Elijah, named after them) and will try to find a solution to their problems: can they find a way to work outside the context of the 3 laws and thus doing, can they save humanity?

SPOILER ALERT: In the end, they will come up with the superseding zeroth law (a robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm), will get the first ideas of psychohistory (as dealing with large populations of human beings) but will not prevent Earth to be slowly rendered radioactive; after having thus ensured that humanity will survive and expand, Giskard succumbs. His last act will be to modify Daneel to give him his abilities of mind reading and adjusting...

At least!!! Now I know the whole story of why is Earth radioactive! This book was a great read as usual and it is fun to see the 2 robots trying to emulate the thinking of Elijah.

Since I've now finished the robots cycle, I guess I'll go back to Zola :)

The Robots of Dawn

Elijah Baley's back in business! On Earth, he has resumed his former life as a plainclothesman, only altered from his earlier adventures by:

• Training a group of youngsters (including his son) to stay outside, in order to prepare them to an hypothetical planet relocation he's hoping for them
• A bad work atmosphere since the hyperwave drama depicting his investigation on Solaria has made him, unwillingly, known throughout the universe; his co-workers now think him infatuated...

But now, Dr Fastolfe (previously seen in The Caves of Steel), the leader on Aurora, asks for his help in the investigation of the "termination" of a humaniform robot, the only one other than Daneel... The future of Earth hangs in the balance of this seemingly impossible mission.
As usual, R. Daneel Olivaw will be with him and he will have another robot bodyguard in R. Giskard. The main problem is that Fastolfe has publicly admitted he's the only one skillful enough to be able to "robo-block" such an advanced positronic brain, and his political enemies are using this to get rid of him.
The larger picture is that Fastolfe advocates the settlement of the universe by everybody (including Earthmen) and even wants to provide technical help to Earthpeople; his adversaries are pro-Aurora and want the billions of Earthmen confined on Earth. Whereas Fastolfe sees Earthmen as adventurous and prone to generate cultural progress and thinks the Spacer's way of life leads to stagnation, his adversaries want him to make his humanoid robot technology publicly available so that such robots can prepare worlds for the future use of Aurorans.
On Aurora, Lije find himself confronted again (see The Naked Sun) with Gladia Delmarre who moved from Solaria to Aurora to be able to "touch" people... and with whom the famous hyperwave drama says he was sentimentally involved.

That's it for the pitch, now to my impressions, but beware, MASSIVE
SPOILER AHEAD...

• Great book as usual, I'm being spoiled and now expect every Asimov book to be great... Great story and storytelling, superb characters, and both the micro sub-plots and the massive galaxies-wide plans
• I'm getting the big picture but in a blurred and full-of-holes way: I can see where Daneel got his mind reading/writing abilities, I can even see the first steps of psycho-history (see Foundation and Earth and Prelude to Foundation for both references) but all coming down to Giskard? Great, didn't see that coming
• I love the endings here: in The Naked Sun, the actual murderer walks free and no one cares to ask; and in this one there's no murderer but someone is punished as such anyway :)
• Then there's the sex: I had already noted and written for Foundation and Earth that there was a lot more sexual allusions and activity in the books Asimov wrote later in his life and this one is no exception: written 26 years after the Naked Sun, it has robots as sex toys and Lije being done by Gladia; in this context, sex was not necessary and Asimov is not as good at writing about it as he is at the rest

I need to fill the holes between the Robots and Foundation so I'll read the next one right now. I suspect this will bring me to the conclusion that I need to read the empire series but so be it, I'm prepared for another string of great books!