The Caves of Steel
A detective novel set in an overpopulated, domed Earth future.
The Caves of Steel is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, first published as a serial in Galaxy magazine from October to December 1953, with a Doubleday hardcover following in 1954. It is a detective story that illustrates Asimov's advocacy that science fiction can be applied to any literary genre, rather than being a limited genre in itself. The novel introduces protagonists Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw, who later became favorite characters of Asimov, and was initially conceived as completely distinct from his Foundation trilogy, though decades later Asimov linked them into a single future history.
Quick Facts
- Author
- Isaac Asimov
- Cover Artist
- Ruth Ray
- Country
- United States
- Language
- English
- Series
- Robot series
- Genre
- Mystery Science fiction
- Publisher
- Doubleday
- Release Date
- 1953 (magazine), 4 February 1954 (book)
- Media Type
- Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
- Pages
- 224
- Preceded By Quotation Marks
- Mother Earth
- Followed By
- The Naked Sun
Facts from the source article.
Lore & Background
The story is set in a future where Earth is overpopulated with eight billion people, living in vast city complexes covered by huge metallic domes called 'caves of steel.' The New York City of that era encompasses present-day New York City and large tracts of New Jersey, with underground transit connected to malls and apartment blocks, so that most people never exit the domes and suffer from extreme fear of leaving them. Meanwhile, fifty Spacer worlds have been colonized, rich and with low population density, using robot labor heavily, while Earth has strict rules against robots.
Reader's Guide
The novel's central plot device is a murder that takes place before it opens, a trademark of Asimov which he attributed to his squeamishness and John Campbell's advice to begin as late in the story as possible. The victim is Roj Nemmenuh Sarton, a Spacer Ambassador who lived in Spacetown outside New York City and had been trying to convince Earth's government to loosen anti-robot restrictions. The New York police commissioner charges Elijah Baley with finding the murderer, in cooperation with a highly advanced humanoid robot named R. Daneel Olivaw, who is visually identical to a human and equipped with a scanner that can detect human emotions through encephalographic waves. The novel was praised by reviewers such as Groff Conklin, Boucher and McComas, P. Schuyler Miller, and Villiers Gerson, and was voted the 30th Best All-Time Novel in the 1975 Locus Poll and the 33rd Best All-Time SF Novel in the 1987 Locus Poll.
Did You Know?
- Asimov was a claustrophile and wrote the novel picturing a world where everyone lived in underground cities, comfortably enclosed away from the open air.
- The 'caves of steel' resemble the planet Trantor, even though the Robot and Foundation series were not made part of the same fictional universe until much later.
- The murder victim, Roj Nemmenuh Sarton, was killed by a blaster, and the killer accidentally killed him instead of the robot R. Daneel Olivaw due to broken eyeglasses.
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