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I, Robot is a collection of science fiction short stories by Isaac Asimov, first published in 1950. Although working well enough as standalone stories, they share a theme of the interaction of man, robots and morality, and put together tell a larger story of Asimov's fictional history of robotics.
The narrator, and central character, is Dr. Susan Calvin, chief robopsychologist at U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc., the major manufacturer of robots. The stories are presented as her reminiscences of her past work, which chiefly are concerned with aberrant behaviour of robots, and the use of 'robopsychology' to sort them out. The book also contains the short story in which Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics first appear.
The title was applied earlier to a short story by Eando (Earl and Otto) Binder. Asimov originally titled his collection Mind and Iron, and initially objected when the publisher changed the title.
In the late 1970s, Harlan Ellison produced a screenplay based on Asimov's book. The film was never made, but the script appeared in book form under the title I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay (1994). A 1977 Alan Parsons Project album was inspired by Asimov's I Robot and is named after it. A motion picture adaptation starring Will Smith is currently under development by Twentieth Century Fox and is expected to be released in 2004.
| Preceded by: |
Robot Series Foundation Series |
Followed by: The Complete Robot |
I, Robot
To you, a robot is just a robot. But you haven't worked with them. You don't know them. They're a cleaner, better breed than we are.
When Earth is ruled by master-machines... when robots are more human than humankind.
Isaac Asimov's unforgettable, spine-chilling vision of the future - available at last in its first paperback edition.
- -Cover blurb from the paperback edition of I, Robot, and largely inaccurate to boot. The first paragraph is a quotation of one of the book's characters, Dr Susan Calvin, but the rest reads rather like the copy of an editor who hadn't actually read the book. At the time of publication, robots were depicted in science fiction as either servile machines or evil creations that revolted in the manner of Frankenstein. Asimov himself said that in writing the Robot stories he sought to replace both views with something more rational.
- -Cover blurb from the paperback edition of I, Robot, and largely inaccurate to boot. The first paragraph is a quotation of one of the book's characters, Dr Susan Calvin, but the rest reads rather like the copy of an editor who hadn't actually read the book. At the time of publication, robots were depicted in science fiction as either servile machines or evil creations that revolted in the manner of Frankenstein. Asimov himself said that in writing the Robot stories he sought to replace both views with something more rational.
Stories
- "Robbie"
- "Runaround"
- "Reason"
- "Catch That Rabbit"
- "Liar"
- "Little Lost Robot"
- "Escape"
- "Evidence"
- "The Evitable Conflict"
ISBN numbers
- ISBN 0606171347 (prebound, 1991)
- ISBN 0553294385 (mass market paperback, 1991)
- ISBN 1401400396 (e-book, 2001)
- ISBN 1401400388 (e-book, 2001)
- ISBN 0553803700 (hardcover, 2004)
- ISBN 078577338X (hardcover)
- ISBN 0007119631 (paperback, UK, new edition)
- ISBN 0586025324 (paperback, UK)
I, Robot: The Game
I, Robot was an arcade game made by Atari and released in 1983. It was the first commercial video game with 3-D polygonal graphics and featured flat shading. It also had very innovative gameplay, featuring a "game" mode and an "ungame" mode where one draws with the objects in the game by leaving trails. The game has no relation to the book of the same name.
