The Naked Sun - Isaac Asimov

I've been working my way through some of Asimov's stories that I own and haven't read in years. I went through the first three Foundation books the last two weeks for the first time in a decade, and now I'm on to the Robots series. I don't think I've read The Naked Sun in closer to 15 years. It was before I this blog existed, I know that.

Compared to the Foundation books, the Robots series are more whodunits, with the main character is an Earth detective, Elijah Bailey and his partner, R. Daneel Olivaw. "R" standing for "robot. I've never read Caves of Steel, their first adventure together, but I think Bailey is more comfortable with Daneel here. He doesn't like robots in general, and it really caught my attention that he calls every other robot he meets "boy". Considering that robots are not counted as living beings, and treated as tools or servants, that choice of word was interesting. I'm assuming deliberate on Asimov's part. I don't think I noticed it the first time I read this, at least not enough to be a memory that stuck with me over the years.

In this case, Elijah is requested to solve a murder on Solaria, an entire world with only 20,000 people on it, each living in a vast estate almost entirely alone, except for their robots. The Solarians have no experience with murder, so they need help. Bailey had solved a murder involving a Spacer before, so he gets sent, with orders from Earth to observe closely for weaknesses. Since Solaria produces the most advanced robots, the other 49 Spacer worlds are watching them closely, which is how Daneel gets sent in, as he's from Aurora. The mystery revolves around the loopholes in the Three Laws of Robotics, but Elijah struggles more with how different Solarian society is from Earth. It makes some of the conclusions he'd normally draw, the motives people might have, seem much more suspect. The way things might work on Earth, is not how they work on Solaria.

Asimov spends a lot of time on that, the extremes the two worlds have gone to, and how peculiar each of them seems to the other. Elijah can scarcely believe the Solarians just go outside, beneath their sun, like its no big deal, since everyone on Earth lives underground (hence "caves of steel", I assume). The Solarians are varying degrees of repulsed at the idea of actually being in the physical presence of another person. One guy has to leave the room because he's growing ill at the thought he might be breathing air exhaled by another person. Earth has more people than the 50 Spacer worlds put together, so Elijah thinks nothing of it.

Asimov's work always reads easily to me, I can just breeze through it, which is nice. This story is mostly conversations, but he keeps them interesting since there's always something going on. Baley struggling with his own problems, or trying to see what he's missing. The things the people he's talking to don't mention, because it's so unimportant or obvious to them it doesn't bear commenting on.

'He settled back. The incident had not been without its uses. It was an educational example of how remorseless a robotic society could be. Once brought into existence, robots were not so easily removed, and a human who wished to dispense with them even temporarily found he could not.'