I, Robot

I, Robot, a science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov, is a set of stories about the first robotic machines and the problems and pitfalls of living with and working alongside them. The book is the first in a series of several novels about robots; it is famous for its Three Laws of Robotics that govern machine behavior, and for its device, the positronic brain, which contains a robot’s conscious intelligence.

Asimov (1920-1992) is one of the most important science fiction writers of the 20th century. Extremely prolific, he published 500 fiction and nonfiction books along with hundreds of stories and essays. His works include science fiction, mysteries, fantasies, children’s books, popular science, history, and religion. Asimov won many awards, including multiple Hugo and Nebula prizes for science fiction writing.

I, Robot is part of a large future history that includes the Robot, Empire, and Foundation series. Some of Asimov’s works have been made into films, including I Robot, The Bicentennial Man, and Nightfall. The Foundation books also have been adapted into a TV series.

The eBook version of the 2004 edition forms the basis for this study guide.

Plot Summary

Dr Susan Calvin, preparing to retire as the world’s first robopsychologist, agrees to an interview for a feature article on her life. She starts by describing an eight-year-old girl, Gloria, whom she met briefly, a youngster who had one of the first robots.

Gloria loves her nursemaid robot, Robbie, a fun and caring playmate. Gloria’s father, George Watson, is delighted with Robbie, but her mother, Grace, instinctively dislikes the robot and finally convinces George to get rid of it and tell their daughter that the robot simply disappeared.

Gloria mopes for a month until they to take her to New York to distract her with movies and sightseeing. Gloria’s thrilled because she thinks they are going to search for Robbie. At a museum, she asks a talking, sedentary robot if it knows where Robbie is; confused, the primitive machine breaks down. George suggests they take Gloria to the US Robots factory so she can see that Robbie is not a person but a machine. There, Gloria recognizes Robbie, who saves her from an oncoming warehouse trolley. Grace relents, and Gloria gets her robot back.

Years later, on the planet Mercury, two technicians, Gregory Powell and Mike Donovan, install a new robot to run a mining operation, but the robot, Speedy, gets stuck walking in a circle outside while searching for liquid selenium to power the station’s energy system.

Powell knows that all robots must obey three laws: They cannot hurt people; they must obey them; and they cannot hurt themselves unless that violates the first two laws. Riding giant drone robots, Powell and Donovan reach Speedy on the blazing-hot surface, but Speedy acts as if drunk. He cannot resolve the tension between the second and third Laws: If he collects the selenium, he will be damaged by the nearby volcanic vent. Powell steps away from his big robot and walks across the hot ground until Speedy snaps out of his confusion and saves the technician.

Their next job is to install a new command robot on a space station that converts solar power to a powerful energy beam aimed at Earth. Powell and Donovan discover that the robot, a QT model named Cutie, has decided that it is a creation of the station’s generator, and that this Master will soon discard the human operators as inferior workers.

A solar storm will shortly disrupt the energy beam, causing frightful damage to Earth, so Powell tries to convince Cutie of the danger. Cutie, though, does not believe in stars and planets, and it ignores Powell. The storm hits, but Cutie manages the energy beam so perfectly that Earth suffers no damage. Powell decides Cutie’s religion is harmless after all.

The team’s next visits an asteroid, where a command robot, Dave, manages six slave robots who dig for ore. Sometimes, though, the robots walk around in military formation, neglecting their mining duties. Powell and Donovan figure out that dangerous situations overload Dave’s judgment, and he removes the bots from risk by having them march. Powell shoots one of the slave robots, which removes one-sixth of the decision-making chores, and Dave recovers his sanity.

One day, US Robots builds a robot that accidentally acquires the ability to read human minds. At first, this is merely interesting, but the robot, Herbie, begins lying to the executives at the factory, telling them what he knows they want to hear instead of the truth that will hurt their feelings. Dr Calvin, who has a crush on a fellow worker whom Herbie assures her is interested in her, discovers that the man is instead getting engaged to another woman. Two other executives are at each other’s throats because the robot has falsely claimed to one that the other will retire and name the first as his successor. Dr Calvin solves the problem by reminding the perplexed robot that he must lie to make people happy, which also later makes them unhappy, which violates the First Law. The robot goes insane and his brain collapses.

Researchers sometimes must face dangers, but their robots, obliged to protect them, will not permit them to do so. The government demands that US Robots secretly build robots that will stand aside while humans take certain risks. One of them, working on a secret project at a base far out in the solar system, annoys a researcher, who tells the robot to get lost, and the robot does so, hiding among a new shipment of identical robots. It must be found because it is dangerous if at large among humans, but all efforts to separate it prove fruitless. Dr Calvin invents a test that can distinguish between the rogue robot’s behavioral response and those of the newer robots. When discovered, the rogue tries to kill her, but a researcher zaps the robot, killing it.

US Robots and competitors race to develop a faster-than-light engine that can take people quickly to faraway planets. The first super-brain machine to research it found that no one can live through the space-warp experience, and the machine, unwilling to create something lethal, breaks down. Dr Calvin talks a US Robot super-brain into gently approaching the problem and quickly reporting in the moment it encounters a dilemma. The brain completes the calculations, builds a hyper-space ship, and sends Powell and Donovan all the way out of the galaxy and back. It turns out that anything that enters a space warp disappears from reality but reappears again after leaving the space warp. Thus, passengers die but then return to life, so there is no lasting harm.

Robots become a hot topic during a local mayoral election. Candidate Francis Quinn accuses his opponent, Stephen Byerley, of being a robot. Byerley, a district prosecutor, refuses to be tested, and he campaigns on the right to privacy violated by Quinn. During a speech, Byerley is confronted by a man who dares the candidate to slug him and prove he is not a robot. Byerley strikes the man and wins the election. Dr Calvin realizes, though, that a robot may hit a person if that person is another robot.

Byerley becomes World Co-ordinator, and he discovers perturbations in the worldwide economy that is overseen by several computing Machines. He suspects that the anti-robot Society for Humanity is sabotaging the data. Dr Calvin explains that the Machines already have taken the sabotage into account and have minimized its effects. In short, the machines now control the world’s economy; this prevents wars and the petty ambitions of rulers. Thus, though humans still think they are running things, it is really the robots who are in charge.