Rating: 
Summary: Mysterious Foresite
Review: A look at one possible alternative for the future. Asimov tells a great story of things to come and he adds a murder mystery to start us off on this road of thought provoking adventure with robots. Even the non-SciFi fan will enjoy it. If you enjoy books by any of the well known authors like Charles Dickens you will be pleased.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Story on Several Levels
Review: Caves of Steel is one of Asimov's best books (well, truthfully the same can be said of every Asimov book I've read). As Asimov does so well, the book is written on multiple levels and they are all interesting and engaging.At first glance, we have Elijah Bailey, the earther, a New Yorker of the future who lives in the vast underground city. Bailey is a cop put on the case of a murdered Spacer (those humans who have settled other planets). Bailey is teamed with another investigator R. Daneel Olivaw who we find out later, is a robot. More than just your basic whodunit, this book deals with larger issues of the differences between people that keep them in fear and mistrust of each other. The Spacers who have embraced the outside world, who have embraced technology and robotics live in fear of the humans who stayed on earth. Those humans who live in extremely close contact with each other in teeming underground cities as they've all developed a fear of the open sky. The earthers loathe the Spacers for their superiority complex and the Spacers fear contamination from the earthers. Bailey must overcome these inbred fears and bigotries when he must travel off planet with his partner, a robot, to deal with and solve a murder of a Spacer. Olivaw (who is a recurring character in many Asimov books) sort of becomes Bailey's moral compass and our guide through the physical and emotional journey Bailey takes. The book is a quick read and it's good old sci fi at its best. I recommend also reading "The Naked Sun" and "The Robots of Dawn" which also feature Bailey and Olivaw.
Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece
Review: The Caves of Steel is an incredible science fiction novel that work on two levels. Although it is deeply enmeshed in Asimov's robot universe, and has many of its inherent SF trappings, it is, at its heart, a murder mystery. For this reason, I think it can be enjoyed by science fiction fans and non-science fiction fans alike. It is very, very tightly written, quite suspenseful, and will keep you reading (and guessing) right up until the end. A true page-turner. That said, the novel, despite its brevity, probes quite well into some very deep issues. Baley and his relationship with his robot partner is quite a fascinating study: one watches his strong initial prejudice melt away as the book goes along, which makes for quite a statement on ethical relativism and cultural bias. Asimov also manages to bring up that oft-asked science fiction question: just what, exactly, does it mean to be human? On top of all this, the book features some quite philosophical aspects and several near-poetic bursts of dialogue that shows Asimov, like all good science fiction writers, did some good, hard thinking and extrapolation on where humanity may be heading in the future. He senses some real dangers (overpopulation, a dependence on technology, cities getting too big) and shows us the warning signs. The whole book is very well-written and described, and Asimov managed to build up quite a universe in it - the book has a very film noir aspect to it, and was obviously a big influence on subsequent writings by many different authors. Readers get the best of both worlds with an exquisite murder mystery, along with many other deeper issues examined that one would not normally find in a mere mystery story. An essential science fiction read, and a masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: One Of The Best Asimov's I've Read
Review: The positronic brain is the new disruption of the earth. People have lost their jobs, and now, Elijah Baley is paired up with R. Daneel Olivaw. (R. for robot.) It is a book of where Elijah does not trust his partner, but little does he no that Daneel will turn out to be his best friend...
If you read this one, ya gotta read them all!
They pull you in and you digest it as well as Daneel digests food!
(You have to read the book to find out what that means!)
I'ts One Of The Best Asimov's I've Read!
I loved it, and hopefully you will too!
Rating:
Summary: COLUMBO IN SPACE
Review: 3000 years into the future Earth is reaching the end of its rope in terms of how many human beings can reside on it. All of its inhabitants are crowded into supercities where privacy and personal space are long forgotten myths. Almost none of them can say they have ever seen the open sky before because of the domes that enclose them like prisons. All food is rationed. Adding to the tension of overpopulation, Spacers have arrived on Earth. Spacers are earthlings that left their planet a millenium before to colonize other planets with the help of robots. Their presence is not explained but the rumour is that the Spacers have come to take over and to gradually get rid of earth's inhabitants by replacing them with robot workers. A murder is committed in the Spacer city and Lije Baley is called in to solve the mystery and avert an intergalactic incident. The problem is that the Spacers want one of their own people to be his partner, and IT just happens to be a robot named R. Daneel Olivaw. Baley believes that if the robot solves the case first, then Baley, like all earthmen, will be replaced by the robot. This novel seems very prophetic now, even more so then when it came out in 1953. There have been many workers that have been put out of jobs by machines and there will be many more replaced by them in the decades to come. You can really identify with the Midievalists in the novel. These are radical groups of men and women who simply want to return to nature, the whole garden of eden scene where man works from the soil and is not reliant on technology. There's no real force for evil in the novel because everyone is shown to have a motive for what they are doing which gives it great depth. I thought that with its publication date Caves of Steel would be hokey and dated but really the only thing dated about it was Baley's exclamation of the word "Jehosophat!" whenever he needed to swear. One criticism I do have is that Baley seemed to be slightly unintelligent, almost. He very frequently comes to the wrong conclusions and looks like a total fool. But I guess in the end this just makes him more human. I enjoyed Caves and look forward to reading the second volume of the Robot series, The Naked Sun.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent s-f mystery
Review: In the not-too-distant future, the human race has begun colonization of other worlds. But the new worlds' residents, the Spacers, are not in thrall of Earth, rather they hold Earth by the throat. Now, in the one Spacer locale on the homeworld of humanity, a prominent spacer has been murdered. Tasked with capturing the murderer, Elijah Baley, a resident of the largest human City, essentially large hives mostly underground, must team with a human-appearing robot to solve the crime. Robots, however, are not very well regarded on Earth at this time, so Elijah must overcome his own bias in order to work effectively with Robot Daneel Olivaw. The book details many of the conditions of overpopulated Earth and the eternally enclosed humans, who now have an unreasoning fear of the outdoors. The politics between the Spacers and the native Earthmen is also discussed in detail. Overall, this is a very well-balanced story which begins the robot series, continuing from the basis Asimov set in his collection Robot stories in I, ROBOT.
Rating:
Summary: An Exciting Adventure
Review: This is a great book that takes place in Asimov's universe. If you read this book you will learn of Robots, space travel, Earth's future and many other interesing Asimov ideas.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book, the Caves of Steel
Review: You will surprise how logical those robot stories go. The ending is very surprising but in the logical sense it is not strange at all. The logic makes everything possible! If you like thriller and sci-fi just try this and satisfaction is guaranteed. Also this book gives the sense how the Earth has changed and caused the later consequences, which are shown in other books. You will enjoy the style, storyline, the characters and everything in the book!
Rating:
Summary: A bit dated, but one of Asimov's best
Review: Despite the fact that the style of this book reads a bit like "Dragnet", it's one of Asimov's best sci-novels and the first in the Robot Trilogy. Elijah Bailey is a cop in the city of New York, part of a future Earth completely covered in a steel dome (the Caves of Steel) and connected by moving beltways in supercities underground. The vast population is completely agoraphobic; that is, no one ever goes outdoors. Food is produced by vast hydroponic farms and chemical factories that process yeast into edible form. Life is rigidly controlled, manners are prescribed even for going to the Personal (lavatories) and one's job ranking determines even small privileges like a sink in one's flat or real chicken more than once a week. The planets outside of Earth have been colonized by "Spacers." After a century or two, there is friction between the cave-dwelling Earth citizens and the relatively well-off and longer-lived Spacers. Robots are manufactured on the Spacer's planets, to supply much needed labor for their under-populated worlds, and the import of the efficient machines threatens the livelihoods and thus quality of life of Earth citizens doing mundane work who hover on the edge of basic subsistence. Against this background, Lije is called in to investigate the shocking murder of one Spacer living in Spacetown outside the city. He is given an unusual partner for this investigation; a robot. Not a metallic machine, as robots appear on Earth normally, but a counterfeit of a human so convincing that even Lije suspects that R. Daneel is not a robot, but an actual man. Lije and R. Daneel search the city for suspects and motives in the murder and develop a working relationship with each other that would be, except that robots have no emotions, friendship. The investigation takes a dangerous turn that begins to entangle Lije and a loved one, and Lije must fight to solve the mystery and stay on the case. How the mystery is solved is good reading, and the relationship between Lije and Daneel is well-drawn. And the end of the story leads well to the next novel in the series, The Naked Sun, which unlike many books in a trilogy, is as strong or stronger than the first.
Rating:
Summary: Best of the 14-book series
Review: In the middle of my seventh reading of the series, I would have to pick this as the best book of the bunch! Stands by itself as a great novel, but best to read one book after the other. You won't be able to put any of them down! (except Forward the Foundation gets a bit slow at times; make sure you read the first section of Foundation before you read the last section of Forward).
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