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Summary: Science, Robots, Psychology
Review: Superb. Hard to believe this was written so long ago. Does sci-fi get any better than this?
Rating: 
Summary: It's nice....
Review: I picked this book up because of an online friend was raving about the series. Well all I can say about this book is that it has a few nice stories to it. My main problem is the fact that it has little to no substance to it. I did not learn anything from the story, I did not gain any insight, I do not think about things differently any more. This book just reminds me of a cartoon series because of the different short stories. I would have found this book infinitely more interesting if it focused on say the stories "Robbie" or "Reason". Another problem I have is that all of the solutions to the problems that arose in every story came to quickly to the flat characters. Generally, I am very disappointed.
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Summary: An old friend
Review: According to the chronology of these tales, Dr. Susan Calvin finished her undergraduate degree at Columbia this past spring and has just begun her graduate work. She's supposed to start working at U.S. Robots in 2008. But as readers of Heinlein's _The Door into Summer_ know, Daniel Boone Davis has been out of Cold Sleep for nearly three years now, and his _Flexible Frank_ is presumably alreay giving U.S. Robots a run for their money.It's fascinating to watch the actual times of these stories come and go. Heinlein and Asimov have long been two of my favorite SF writers. The stories assembled here represent some of Asimov's best-known work. It's pretty impressive that they hold up as well as they do. Oh, the details are way off, but of course the stories were written in the 1950s. At any rate, what really moves these tales along is the characterization. Especially Susan Calvin. You wouldn't know it from reading this book, but she was Asimov's first real female lead character. He sketched her with broad, bold strokes, but he did such a fine job that she feels _real_. (She _is_ real, darn it; I've known her since I was a little kid.) The rest of the crew are well delineated too, but it's the cold-blooded robopsychologist who really shines here. The stories themselves are masterfully constructed and well told, as of course we long ago came to expect from the late Good Doctor. Probably most readers of this page will have heard of the Three Laws of Robotics, and some of us can even recite them from memory. Well, this is where they come from. If you haven't read this book yet, pick it up at once; until you've read it, you've missed some of the best classic SF there is. And you've also missed a profoundly optimistic, technophilic view of the human future: robots are, as Dr. Calvin says, "a cleaner, better breed than we are."
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Summary: the mind and character of a robot
Review: this book isnt great--written in the 50's--it really doesnt hold up these days
the characters are too flat in description
i would pass on this one
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Summary: "Robot" like me
Review: The three laws of Robotics are that a robot may not (through action or inaction) harm or allow a human to be harmed, that they must obey humans unless it violates Law 1, and must protect themselves unless it violates Laws 1 and 2. With that basic concept, Isaac Asimov spun a collection of thought-provoking stories about these robots of the future. Told within the framework of a robot-shrink's reminiscences, "I, Robot" contains several stories: "Robbie," about a little girl's robot nursemaid and best friend who is sent away by her shallow, controlling mother. "Runaround," in which Gregory Powell and Mike Donovan find themselves in a dangerous situation on Mercury -- with Speedy (SPD), a robot who seems to be drunk. Powell and Donovan find more robot trouble with Cutie (QT-1), who creates an entire religious structure with himself as the Master's prophet. "Catch The Robot," where Donovan and Powell have trouble with Dave (DV-5), who takes his underling robots on military marches. "Liar!" presents Herbie (RB), a robot who can read minds -- and is somehow messing with the humans. "Little Lost Robot" presents the Nestor (NS-2) robots, who have a modified sense of the first law -- and one of the robots is lying. "Consolidated" presents the Brain, which builds a ship and sends it away -- with the unlucky Donovan and Powell on board. "Evidence" is against Stephen Byerley, a politician with a very deep, dark secret. And "The Inevitable Conflict" offers a glimpse into the growing influence of machine over man. It's a testament to Isaac Asimov's skill that the stories of "I, Robot" are still so impressive today, despite having been written from 1940 to 1950. With a variety of futuristic robots and the three laws of Robotics, he offers intriguing looks at politics, ethics, theology, and other concepts. Even stuff like senses of humor and white lies are looked at. If a robot can't harm a human, could it tell a human a truthful answer that would make that human feel bad? Could a mass of metal and circuits grow to feel? It also leaves the reader with the feeling that these robots are, in some ways, a little better than humans while resembling them. Like humans, the robots have nutcases, savants, religious fanatics, and egomaniacs -- but the normal robots have a core command that they should not harm humans, something that real humans are sadly lacking in. Susan Calvin is sort of the framework for this collection, although she is only really humanized in "Liar!" Powell and Donovan are everymen who just happen to be "accursed." These poor guys careen helplessly from one disaster to another, and provide most of the comic relief as well. The writing is fairly ordinary, not extremely detailed; it's the subject matter that makes the stories classic. From many generic scifi books, from Star Trek's Data to Star Wars' Threepio and Artoo, there have been a lot of robots who thought, felt, and provided insights or amusement. So take a look at "I, Robot," to see what inspired them.
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Summary: Give it a Pass
Review: I've read Asimov's Foundation Trilogy and enjoyed it, so I know he can do better than this. The subject matter just isn't that interesting. Perhaps in the 40's and 50's, when these stories were written, it was enough to have a robotic character to grab people's attention. But by today's standards, these stories are pretty weak, and no robot can distract from the substandard writing. Subject matter aside, the characters are even worse. Flat and unrealistic, with dialogue that sounds like it was written by a 7th grader, I found myself hating many of them not because that was the author's intent, but simply because I couldn't stomach the cheesy things they said! All in all, I would recommend that you pass on this one, unless you're just curious to see what passed for science fiction in the early days.
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Summary: A brilliant vision of the future
Review: "I, Robot," by Isaac Asimov, consists of 9 interconnected stories and an introduction that serves as a frame story. The book's copyright page gives a sense of the text's history; a Doubleday edition was published back in 1950, and the copyright dates of the individual stories range from 1940 to 1950. Together these stories trace the future history of humanity and examine the roles that robots will play in that future. Along the way the reader will meet a robot prophet, a telepathic robot, and many other characters. Dominating the book are the Three Laws of Robotics, rules which govern robot behavior. Asimov brilliantly uses these laws as a literary device to unify the book. Ultimately he looks at such issues as law, theology, and global politics in the context of human-robot interaction. Asimov's robots could be seen as the literary "ancestors" of the many robots and androids that have appeared in literature and popular culture since this book was first published. And Asimov establishes the book's own literary genealogy with a reference to Frankenstein. "I, Robot" is a brilliant and important work; it's full of compelling ideas and is enjoyable to read.
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Summary: Isaac Asimov laws down the Three Laws of Robotics
Review: The word "robot" comes from Karel Capek's play "R.U.R.," where it refers to automatic laborers of organic origin (i.e., androids). However, the notion of "robot" that exists in the popular consciousness today is due in large part to the writings of Isaac Asimov. Before the short stories that were eventually collected as in this "I, Robot" volume robot stories in Science Fiction pulp magazines in the Frankenstein mode or as ways of delineating the differences between humans and machines. But Asimov reset the genre with his Three Laws of Robotics. The stories that followed explored the logical and narrative possibilities inherent in the apparent contradiction of those laws. The ethical question of whether robots are "human" is not central to these stories; they are clearly machines, but they are so inherently ethical that it is hard not to see some sort of superiority to their existence. After all, their prime directive of preserving of human life and limb in ingrained in their positronic brains; most human beings do not have that stricture any where near being firmly entrenched in their cognitive structures. The "I, Robot" stories are arranged in a "chronological" order that traces the development of these robots from their primitive origins to their evolutionary destiny, where human beings may well end up being rendered obsolete. Asimov explores the possibilities of his three laws to present us robots that have gone insane, robots that can read minds, and robots that save humanity by taking over to run the world. If you are reading these stories for the second time, which is a fair possibility given that they are Science Fiction classics, then you should pay attention to the subtle differences between the Donovan & Powell stories with those featuring Susan Calvin; it basically comes down to whether Asimov wants to explain things in term of a dialogue or a lecture. Once you have read "I, Robot" be sure to check out the brilliant unproduced screenplay Harlan Ellison wrote from these stories as well as the Asimov robot novels, "The Caves of Steel," "The Naked Sun," and "Robots of Dawn."
Rating: 
Summary: I, Human
Review: I was first introduced to Isaac Asimov when a close friend suggested I read this book many years ago. I was soon caught up in his character development and ability to help me imagine what I was reading. Even the robots took on personality. His laws on robotics will quite possibly be the ground rules for robots once they are developed to a higher Artificial Intelligence. This book set the ground work for other great books he wrote about robots. They are even better and very difficult to put down. If you like books with strong character development and an eye for detail you will enjoy them whether you like Science Fiction or not. I think anyone that likes mysteries will enjoy this and his other books as well. I highly recommend his other robot series books and the Foundation series. I am very surprised they haven't all been made into movies.
Rating:
Summary: Classic
Review: Isaac Asimov's collection of short stories collected herein are both classics of the genre and important benchmarks in the history of science fiction. They were written as separate but semi-connected entities for the "pulp" magazines (mostly Astounding Science Fiction) between 1940 and 1950. (Isaac later added the short bits between stories to establish continuity when they were published in book form, as he did with the original Foundation trilogy.) In them, Asimov posited his now famous "Three Law of Robotics" that became the basis of all his robot stories from them on, and for much of his other fiction as well. Though his stories were always well-grounded in scientific fact, Asimov wrote with a flair that was much more suspenseful than many of the other leading science fiction writers of the time (say, Arthur C. Clarke), that makes his stories, I would think, much more accessible and enjoyable to the common man or non-genre reader. Consequently, these are some of the most famous and influential SF shorts of all-time. Although frequently suspenseful and exciting (some bordering, even, on action/adventure), Asimov's stories in this collection are not really mere romps: they are, instead, a series of logic puzzles based on the Three Laws. They all follow a fairly standard formula (there is a problem with a robot(s) for some reason, and the characters within must solve the problem equipped with logic and the Three Laws), and the characters are not all that drawn-out - which does make them somewhat limited in a sense, and also slightly dated, but these are still fun, exciting stories that have held up and stood the test of time. These stories are also useful because they - hopefully -help teach a reader to be logical. Mr. Asimov himself possessed a highly logical and literally encyclopedic brain (truly a "jack of all trades", the good Doctor wrote and published books on nearly every conceivable subject - from science fiction and science fact to humor, Shakespeare, and the Bible - in turn becoming the only author in history to have a book located in every section of the Dewey Decimal System.) And so, while we cannot all hope to attain such a high level of proficiency, perhaps this book can help us open up our minds and think a little for ourselves - one of the true and unique virtues of science fiction, and one which is frequently overlooked. And, if some of these stories now seem dated (or even cliché) in our modern day world, 50 years after they were written, one must remember - these are the stories that STARTED these clichés. They don't call them classic for nothing. An essential science fiction read.
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