Robots and Empire - Isaac Asimov

The last book in the Robots series, so far as I know anyway, set 200 years after The Robots of Dawn. Elijah Baley is dead, but the man who's ambition he stymied in the previous story isn't (Spacers being extremely long-lived), and that guy is still determined to be rid of Earth, and eventually all the Settler Worlds that have been populated from it.

(The Spacer worlds were also originally populated by Earthmen, but the Spacers prefer to ignore that, or think of it as an unpleasant first step on the journey to their currently more evolved states.)

With Elijah not around, it falls to Baley's old partner Daneel, and Giskard, the empathic robot, to put a stop to the plot. If they can figure there is a plot, and if they can figure out what it is, and if they can somehow get around the First Law of Robotics prohibition against harming a human.

One thing that tripped me up on Robots of Dawn was that while I remembered Giskard had the ability to read and alter emotions and to a certain extent, memories, I associated it with this book, and didn't remember it factoring in to the earlier story. One thing I didn't remember about this book is how, to someone within the story, it would probably seem as though it was about Gladia, the Solarian woman Elijah helped twice, who gets dragged into investigating strange happenings on Solaria, and from there, sets her mind to trying to bridge the gap between Settlers and Spacers, to ensure a future for both groups. She's the one everyone believes saved the Settlers she was with on Solaria, she's making all these speeches, a Spacer willingly mingling with Settlers and Earthmen and whatnot.

And she is doing all those things (although having read the later Foundation books, I kind of know it doesn't come to much). But the real show is Daneel and Giskard, seemingly just tagging along in the background. When really, they're trying to piece things together and find a way to stop what's coming. Which unfortunately leads to a lot of pages of the two of them standing there talking to each other about what they think could be going on while Gladia isn't around. There's a lot of that, from a lot of characters. Mandamus explaining his whole plan and how he came to think of it, Vasalia going through this whole spiel about how she could have given Giskard mental powers as a child. Granting that Asimov's books tend to have a lot of people talking about process, in this book he kind tips the scale too far. There's too much explaining, and not enough happening.

I think the key with Baley was, Asimov was able to convey a sense of peril for Baley while he was trying to pull things together. Even if it was just in terms of being befuddled by Auroran bathrooms, or being worried about his career, there was some tension about if he was going to be able to hold it together long enough to put things together. And his thought processes were nonlinear enough that he didn't lay things out step-by-step. In some cases, we didn't even know what he'd figured out until he reveals it at the very end. Whereas Daneel and Giskard are discussing everything at leisure while Gladia sleeps, and laying it out, one step at a time. That might be a necessary approach to illustrate the differences in how they think from Baley, since they theoretically lack intuition, but it makes for a reading experience of having your hand held the whole way.

It also might not help that Asimov is trying more deliberately to tie what happens here to what eventually happens in the Foundation books. He's been dropping hints about a social science that predicts the actions of humans since at least The Naked Sun, but the idea of Psychohistory comes much more to the forefront here than in the previous books. So it feels as though there are winks and nods towards what we know happens in those later books, but they don't serve much purpose other than winks and nods.

Basically, not the strongest entry in the Robots series.

"The cars are thoroughly computerized," said D.G. "I take it that Spacer cars are not?"

"We have robots to drive them."

D.G. continued waving and Gladia followed his lead automatically. "We don't," he said.

"But the computer is essentially the same as a robot."

"A computer is not humanoid and it does not obtrude itself on one's notice. Whatever the technological similarities must be, they are worlds apart psychologically."