Rating: 
Summary: The madness of two worlds
Review: The Naked Sun is a great sequel to Asimov's Caves of Steel. There, we were introduced to Elijah and Daneel as well as the Earth in the 3rd millenium, with its industrialisation, soullessness, pathological confinement in enclosed spaces and a dictatorial intrusion of the bureaucratic machine into every aspect of life imaginable. In this book, a murder occurs in a Spacer world and Elijah is specifically requested for. The murder, they say, is a logical imposibility, as it could only have been done by one person and even that person could not possibly have done it. Reluctantly, Elijah travels to the world of Solaria, where the murder occured and, reunited with Daneel, attempts to solve it in his already well-known style. Considering the contempt of Spaces for all earthlings, his visit to the outer world of Solaria is unprecedented and he has no idea to expect from a culture which diverged from earth's 300 years ago. The result is staggering - a huge planet with only 20,000 inhabitants and several thousand robots per person means unprecedented luxury. Everyone has huge estates, isolated from everyone and life is automated and mechanised to the nth degree. This reflects in the social aspect of life, where *seeing* a person (in the flesh) has become a social taboo, to be avoided as much as humanly possible. Instead, social contact is done through the impersonal, though extremely sophisticated machinery and is called *viewing*. Even a husband and wife (allocated roles in Solaria) rarely see each other, most of the contact done by viewing. And so, without giving away the details of the mystery, Bailey is essentially faced with a thematic connundrum. On the one hand, the Solarians don't have the almost psychotic fear of open spaces and nature that Bailey and other earthlings possess due to existing all their lives in boxes within boxes. But Solarians have lost the other essential aspect of humanity, as Bailey sees what a pathetically isolated, lolly-pop world Solaria is, where most of what we consider meaningful (real interactions, children, family) are either taboo or nonexistent. The book represents a step up from the Caves of Steel which outlined the way people live on earth. For the first time, we can see Asimov's robot-filled universe and the consequences on technology. On Earth, the crowding has ensured that social contact has remained but people have lost their communion with nature and the universe itself. On Solaria, the reverse is true, with plenty of sun and open spaces but no humanity. I really enjoyed this whole take on the world (especially as Bailey learns to see his fear of open spaces for what it is - an arbitrary, unnecessary hinderance). The only problem is that Asimov hammers this thematic point with the subtlety of a Britney Spears outfit. Still, it's interesting. The mystery itself is what has been criticised in otehr reviews and I don't consider it as satisfactory/"perfect" as Caves of Steel, but it's relatively interesting and it just shows that the action was a vehicle towards what Asimov really wanted to say. So, overall, a great book despite its flaws as it'll actually make you think about the values of our society and the direction we *might* be going - unlike many other sci-fi works (including some by Asimov), this one's both entertaining *and* meaningful.
Rating:
Summary: Naked Sun, won't you come, and wash away the rain
Review: THE NAKED SUN is a witty little novel that is unmistakably a product of Isaac Asimov. Not just because of the ubiquitous robots, but because of the familiar themes that Asimov explored over the course of his decades-long career. On the surface, the novel is a science-fiction mystery story told in the author's usual enjoyable style. But by the time I reached the end of the book, I realized that Asimov had been doing something a little cleverer than his normal runaround, and upon reaching the conclusion, I immediately flipped back and started revisiting some of the earlier scenes to catch what I had missed the first time around. THE NAKED SUN starts up where THE CAVES OF STEEL left off, although you certainly do not need to have read the earlier book to enjoy this one. Earthman Detective Elijah Baley is once again teamed up with R. (for Robot) Daneel Olivaw to solve an unexplained murder. The gimmick this time is that the homicide occurred on one of the mysterious Outer Worlds, and Baley must not only act as policeman, but as an unofficial spy for an Earth government curious as to what the culture is like on those advanced, robot-dependent planets. The mystery is rather clever, although I did figure out what the murder weapon must have been before Baley did. As usual with Asimov's mysteries, I found myself enjoying the investigation more than the occasional plot logic that's thrown to the audience. In the case of this book, the storyline has some solid twists and turns, the only real flaw being that the cast of characters is so small that one could just pick a suspect at random to have a pretty good shot of correctly identifying the killer. The real star of this story is the universe that Asimov builds. The Earth is still the lagging, suspicious and enclosed world of THE CAVES OF STEEL, but now we turn our attention out to one of the colony worlds, Solaria. I could tell that Asimov was having a blast creating this society, giving us all kinds of details such as this planet's frosty relationship with Earth, its delicate relationship with other Outer Worlds, its population levels, its staggeringly high ratio of robots to people, etc. But he has even more fun giving birth to the inhabitants. He has them still as recognizable humans, but from an extremely skewed perspective. For most of the book, it's the story of these strange people and their odd customs that overpowers what is currently going on in the murder investigation. This definitely makes for an interesting read, as once we get to the end, we find that the detective portions were only secondary to the real point of the book. Often Asimov would insert little bits of social commentary into his fictions, with varying levels of success. And indeed, the summation at the end, where Baley lets the cat out of the bag and tells us what the novel has been exploring, is a little on the clumsy side. But the real triumph is how the author quietly and cunningly led us down the garden path to the end. When I opened the book to page one and found Elijah Baley nervously flying into a Washington, DC airport (by sheer coincidence I was making the same approach, albeit I started my journey in a different city than Baley had) and wishing to once again be safe indoors, I chucked to myself, recalling passages from Asimov's autobiography that discussed his legendary fear of flying and his mild claustrophilia. While reading all this stuff about people who hate flying, people who have an unnatural fear of face-to-face meetings, and people who yearn for enclosed spaces, I assumed that Asimov was doing nothing more than his usual shtick of inserting his own neuroses into his fictions (there's nothing wrong with this; it can make for very interesting reading, and it's something I particularly enjoy from Asimov). And with that assumption in place, I didn't pay much mind to what the author was actually setting up beneath the surface. So when the end of the novel rolled around and it was suddenly revealed what he had been up to this whole time, I was very pleasantly surprised. I like pulpy books that work on more than one level, and THE NAKED SUN gives us a very clever look at human fears while also providing an entertaining murder mystery. No, the characters aren't terribly deep, but the plot is a fun one and the extra bit of world building that Asimov engages in raises this book up. I like to read Asimov novels while traveling, because I find them to be a nice relaxing way to pass a few hours. Anytime the good doctor can provide me with something even better and smarter than his usual high standard of amusing, whimsical adventures, I'm a very happy camper indeed.
Rating:
Summary: Naked Sun, won't you come, and wash away the rain
Review: THE NAKED SUN is a witty little novel that is unmistakably a product of Isaac Asimov. Not just because of the ubiquitous robots, but because of the familiar themes that Asimov explored over the course of his decades-long career. On the surface, the novel is a science-fiction mystery story told in the author's usual enjoyable style. But by the time I reached the end of the book, I realized that Asimov had been doing something a little cleverer than his normal runaround, and upon reaching the conclusion, I immediately flipped back and started revisiting some of the earlier scenes to catch what I had missed the first time around. THE NAKED SUN starts up where THE CAVES OF STEEL left off, although you certainly do not need to have read the earlier book to enjoy this one. Earthman Detective Elijah Baley is once again teamed up with R. (for Robot) Daneel Olivaw to solve an unexplained murder. The gimmick this time is that the homicide occurred on one of the mysterious Outer Worlds, and Baley must not only act as policeman, but as an unofficial spy for an Earth government curious as to what the culture is like on those advanced, robot-dependent planets. The mystery is rather clever, although I did figure out what the murder weapon must have been before Baley did. As usual with Asimov's mysteries, I found myself enjoying the investigation more than the occasional plot logic that's thrown to the audience. In the case of this book, the storyline has some solid twists and turns, the only real flaw being that the cast of characters is so small that one could just pick a suspect at random to have a pretty good shot of correctly identifying the killer. The real star of this story is the universe that Asimov builds. The Earth is still the lagging, suspicious and enclosed world of THE CAVES OF STEEL, but now we turn our attention out to one of the colony worlds, Solaria. I could tell that Asimov was having a blast creating this society, giving us all kinds of details such as this planet's frosty relationship with Earth, its delicate relationship with other Outer Worlds, its population levels, its staggeringly high ratio of robots to people, etc. But he has even more fun giving birth to the inhabitants. He has them still as recognizable humans, but from an extremely skewed perspective. For most of the book, it's the story of these strange people and their odd customs that overpowers what is currently going on in the murder investigation. This definitely makes for an interesting read, as once we get to the end, we find that the detective portions were only secondary to the real point of the book. Often Asimov would insert little bits of social commentary into his fictions, with varying levels of success. And indeed, the summation at the end, where Baley lets the cat out of the bag and tells us what the novel has been exploring, is a little on the clumsy side. But the real triumph is how the author quietly and cunningly led us down the garden path to the end. When I opened the book to page one and found Elijah Baley nervously flying into a Washington, DC airport (by sheer coincidence I was making the same approach, albeit I started my journey in a different city than Baley had) and wishing to once again be safe indoors, I chucked to myself, recalling passages from Asimov's autobiography that discussed his legendary fear of flying and his mild claustrophilia. While reading all this stuff about people who hate flying, people who have an unnatural fear of face-to-face meetings, and people who yearn for enclosed spaces, I assumed that Asimov was doing nothing more than his usual shtick of inserting his own neuroses into his fictions (there's nothing wrong with this; it can make for very interesting reading, and it's something I particularly enjoy from Asimov). And with that assumption in place, I didn't pay much mind to what the author was actually setting up beneath the surface. So when the end of the novel rolled around and it was suddenly revealed what he had been up to this whole time, I was very pleasantly surprised. I like pulpy books that work on more than one level, and THE NAKED SUN gives us a very clever look at human fears while also providing an entertaining murder mystery. No, the characters aren't terribly deep, but the plot is a fun one and the extra bit of world building that Asimov engages in raises this book up. I like to read Asimov novels while traveling, because I find them to be a nice relaxing way to pass a few hours. Anytime the good doctor can provide me with something even better and smarter than his usual high standard of amusing, whimsical adventures, I'm a very happy camper indeed.
Rating: 
Summary: Out of the caves, into the sunlight
Review: The Naked Sun is the sequel to The Caves of Steel, and like that is a detective story set on the featuring robot-hating Plainclothesman Baley and, as if to prove Asimov really could predict the future, or movie-making of the '80s anyway, his entirely unsuited partner R Daneel Olivaw, a robot. Unlike CoS it's set on the (spacer) planet Solaria, a planet of few people and many, servile, robots. I was a little disappointed after reading CoS, and was expecting something of the sort here, but that didn't happen. CoS was set on an Earth which I found awkwardly described - you got the impression Asimov was trying to say things about the way people thought but couldn't quite get them out. No such problem with The Naked Sun, where Baley's future-Earth foibles are out in the open (figuratively and literally), and Asimov also successfully hints for the first time that a utopia made up of a world where everything is done for you and where people can live for hundreds of years may, possibly, be flawed, a thesis that becomes stronger in "Robots of Dawn" and "Robots and Empire." Asimov wrote that CoS was an attempt to answer a critic that it was impossible to combine the genres of science fiction with detective stories. The Naked Sun is much more than an answer to that challenge, it's one of Asimov's earliest studies of humanity, and it's a well written thoroughly readable one at that.
Rating:
Summary: Worth Reading
Review: The Naked Sun was definately worth reading as it contained some very intriguing and relevant ideas. Unfortunately, the book was typically early-Asimov in that it lacked much action. While this is important to some, this book didn't really need it to still be captivating.
Rating:
Summary: Asimov makes characters out of entire worlds!
Review: The Naked Sun, continuing the exploits of Elijah Bailey and R. Daneel Olivaw, sees the two investigating a murder on the Spacer world of Solaria, where it is obscene to be in the physical presence of other human beings, and robots are everywhere, attending to every need. The contrast between Earth and Solaria is stark and made purposely so. Only Asimov and a few others have such a talent for making worlds into characters. He conveys the feeling and the emotions as if you were actually there.
Rating:
Summary: Continuing SF-detective tale is great fun
Review: The only reason I've rated this book only four stars is because some of Asimov's later books in the same series, written later in his career (e.g., Robots of Dawn) get even better. I found that there was a linear improvement in Asimov's writing through all of the robot novels. Not only do you get to experience a great mystery-adventure, but you're also exploring the social consequences of near-human robots and the continued urbanization of the Earth along with man's push into space. Daneel Olivaw, the robot partner to detective Elijah Baley, is one of the most memorable characters in the field of speculative fiction. This is the best place to start reading Asimov; however, you should begin by reading the first novel in the series, Caves of Steel. If you enjoy these two, you will absolutely love the sequels. After reading the Robots books, try the Foundation series, which starts slower but gets very good--and ultimately rewards readers of the Robot books by tieing it all together.
Rating:
Summary: Robot Series Triumphs!
Review: The robot series continues to lay the groundwork for the foundation series as a sci-fi detective story. Asimov must have had some sort of flash of brilliance to come up with the idea. It is a delightful read and an integral part of the saga that Asimov will draw out for millenia to come.
Rating:
Summary: One of Asimov's best
Review: The unique thing about this book is that, beside evrything that has been said about this book (robot psychology, tight thriller etc.), I found it to be a beautiful love story, in a very differnt emotional set up, with the least physical interaction between the protagonists. Asimov's insight into human character is brilliant and this understanding is best brought out in his extrapolation of human reactions in situations so difficult to envisage by our perceptions, modelled by our social and emotional environment. if you have any interest in reading books, don't miss this one, and the Foundation trilogy (I won't put the late sequels and prequels in the same category).
Rating:
Summary: THE BEST BOOK I'VE EVER READ
Review: This book is a murder mystery. I couldn't stop reading it. Isaac Asimov truely did a great job on this book. If you like murder-mysteries, buy this!
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