History Literature / TheCavesOfSteel

* FutureSocietyPresentValues: Law enforcement and government jobs are as male-dominated as they were in the real-world 1950s, with the only noted jobs for women as secretaries, food service roles, and as housewives.

* FutureSocietyPresentValues: Because resource-starved Earth cannot afford amenities, most people live in tiny apartments which do not have kitchens, eat in communal cafeterias, and have small families due to PopulationControl. These factors make the role of a {{Housewife}} largely redundant, yet Detective Baley interacts with virtually no women besides his wife, making law enforcement and government as male-dominated as they were in the real-world 1950s.

''Caves of Steel'' takes place in a future UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity. On the overpopulated future Earth, cities are [[MegaCity gigantic metropolises]] [[DomedHometown encased under steel domes]] where people live in cramped conditions and subsist on processed food, never seeing the sky. In contrast, the Spacer worlds -- human-colonized planets which severed political ties with Earth long ago -- are utopian locales of low population, plentiful resources, massive military power, and economies based on the widescale use of robots for manual labor.

''The Caves Of Steel'' was followed by two sequel novels, ''Literature/TheNakedSun'' and ''Literature/TheRobotsOfDawn'' (and a short story, "Literature/MirrorImage", set between the two). After the resolution of the first case, Baley's reputation leads to him traveling to the Spacers' homeworlds to work with Daneel in solving other murder cases with wider political implications.

* LieDetector: "Cerebroanalysis" is a technique that the Spacers use to gauge mental status and general personality. [[LivingLieDetector As a self-contained unit]], Daneel is able to determine, simply by being in the same room, that Commissioner Enderby does not have the capacity to commit premeditated murder, thus eliminating him as a suspect. [[spoiler: [[DeconstructedTrope Since Enderby had not intended to kill Dr. Sarton, and had actually meant to shoot Daneel, his analysis is both correct in its read of Enderby but wrong in the results]].]]

* NeverAcceptedInHisHometown: Robots were created, developed and mass produced right on Earth almost three thousand years before the beginning of the novel. They were integral in the technological revolution that lead to space-travel, food for the whole planet and world peace, but they were never accepted into Earth society and were completely banned from the planet soon after their creation. It is only through the direct intervention of the Spacers, who have completely integrated robots into their way of life, that they are even beginning to merge with the Earthlings.

* BornInTheWrongCentury: There are plenty of "medievalists" in the future who long for the better days of the Medieval Era, which by this time refers to the Late Twentieth/Early Twenty-First centuries. Most of the people of Earth are medievalists in one fashion or another, usually manifesting itself in some minor personal foible. Elijah himself likes to read a lot about the old days, and Enderby, Lije's boss, uses such bizarrely anachronistic things as windows and eyeglasses. There are rumors of more serious subversive organizations that want to dismantle the Cities and return to the earlier ways of life, but Lije does not take them very seriously. [[spoiler:The subversive medievalists really do exist, and in fact were planing some sort of popular uprising in the near future if they could not get their way through political pressure]].

* AgonyBeam: The police are equipped with neuronic whips as a less-than-lethal way of dealing with criminals.

** Lije remarks that Dr. Sarton created R. Daneel to his own image. Then he remarks that Daneel doesn't get the reference because the Bible is not a popular book among Spacers.

* AndThenWhat: The crux of the crisis facing Earth is that nobody on any side of the Medievalist/City argument has thought about what comes next. While the City culture and technology could theoretically be expanded so that human population reaches unfathomable heights, this would be a system so complex and intertwined that ''any'' disruption would lead to it collapsing in a second. And while the human population could theoretically be reduced through population control over generations to the point where humanity can leave the Cities and return to traditional agriculture, this would lead to such a stagnation of technology and culture as to be a societal dead end. Neither provides a viable path for continued human life on planet Earth.

* BornInTheWrongCentury: There are plenty of "medievalists" in the future who long for better days of the Medieval Era, which by this time refers to the Late Twentieth/Early Twenty-First centuries. Most of the people of Earth are medievalists in one fashion or another, usually manifesting itself in some minor personal foible. Elijah himself likes to read a lot about the old days, and Enderby, Lije's boss, uses such bizarrely anachronistic things as windows and eyeglasses. There are rumors of more serious subversive organizations that want to dismantle the Cities and return to the earlier ways of life, but Lije does not take them very seriously. [[spoiler:The subversive medievalists really do exist, and in fact were planing some sort of popular uprising in the near future if they could not get their way through political pressure]].

* TallPoppySyndrome: Not offending their neighbors with the signs of their own success is a constant struggle for the Baleys. They don't take advantage of all the food options they are entitled to, so their neighbors don't spread rumors about Jessie using pull from her old job to get extra perks. They also don't dine at home very often in order to head off general accusations of being antisocial. Baley privately wishes that they could take full advantage of all the benefits of his rating, but he doesn't push Jessie because he knows not ruffling their neighbors is more important.

* WomensMysteries: For women, public Personals are a major socialisation and gossip hotspot. For males, the custom is to not even look at other men when using the facilities.

* ThisIsReality: After first meeting Daneel, Baley laments internally that he isn't the fantasy detective of fiction who is preternaturally calm and collected and observant. Worse, by all appearances Daneel ''is'' as perfect as fiction expects detectives to be, which heightens Baley's feeling of inferiority and his fear of being declasdsified.

''The Caves Of Steel'' was followed by two sequel novels, ''Literature/TheNakedSun'' and ''Literature/TheRobotsOfDawn'' (and a short story, "Mirror Image", set between the two). After the resolution of the first case, Baley's reputation leads to him traveling to the Spacers' homeworlds to work with Daneel in solving other murder cases with wider political implications.

* DroppedGlasses: The chief dropped and broke his glasses when he discovered the body of the victim. [[spoiler: This proves critical to solving the case.]]

* IronicName: Elijah and Jezebel are Biblical figures that were vicious enemies, whereas the Elijah and Jezebel (Jessie) of this story are a HappilyMarried couple. (There ''is'', or was, a bit of conflict over their names: she enjoyed the implications of being a "bad girl" without actually needing to be one, until he burst her bubble with his idea of what might have 'really happened' behind the stories.)

* LostCommonKnowledge: The Spacers, with their eugenics obsession, have no concept of eyesight defects, and thus have effectively forgotten what glasses are for. [[spoiler:As pointed out by Baley, if not for that, the case would have likely been solved within minutes.]]

* ExplainExplainOhCrap: When Life and Daneel visit a premier roboticist, Lije asks him about {{Ridiculously Human Robot}}s, how they would be different from humans, and how easy it is to spot them. The man starts to confidently say how unlikely it is, then pauses as he realizes that Daneel meets the signs he just described. The man is embarrassed that it took him so long to notice.

* ArtisticLicenseGunSafety: {{Justified|Trope}} in Daneel's use of his blaster to cow the rioters in front of the shoe store. One of the most fundamental rules of gun safety is to treat every gun as if it were loaded. The fact that Daneel, a robot, aimed at a crowd of humans in violation of the First Law is one reason for Baley's initial suspicion that he is not actually a robot. But Daneel ''is'' a robot, so to help him observe the gun safety rules, he was given a gun which ''could never be loaded''.

This story was adapted for a VCR game by [[Creator/EastmanKodak Kodak]] in 1988 (with elements of ''Literature/TheRobotsOfDawn'' added in and a character sharing a name -- only the name -- with one from ''Literature/RobotsAndEmpire''). You can watch the movie itself on Website/YouTube [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2e_RVlEFeY here]] (the cards required for the game can be found [[https://archive.org/details/20081021195902robotsMed here]]), as well as a review/riff by [[WebVideo/TheSpoonyExperiment The Spoony One]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGEuFaGkG1A here.]]

* ArtisticLicenseGunSafety: {{Justified|Trope}} in Daneel's use of his blaster to cow the rioters in front of the shoe store. One of the most fundamental rules of gun safety is to treat every gun as if it were loaded. The fact that Daneel, a robot, aimed at a crowd of humans in violation of the First Law is one reason for Baley's initial suspicion that he is not actually a robot. But since Daneel ''is'' a robot, who is incapable of making the fallible human mistakes gun safety rules exist to prevent, he rightly ignores them.

* InWhichATropeIsDescribed: {{Downplayed|Trope}}. The book's chapter titles are more explicitly descriptive than in contemporary works, but terser than the long-form sentences that first codified this trope.

* GenreBusting: Sci-fi robot detective stories.

''Caves of Steel'' takes place in a future UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity. On the overpopulated future Earth, cities are [[MegaCity gigantic metropolises]] [[DomedHometown encased under steel domes]] where people live in cramped conditions and subsist on processed food, never seeing the sky. In contrast, the Spacer worlds--human-colonized planets which severed political ties with Earth long ago--are utopian locales of low population, plentiful resources, massive military power, and economies based on the widescale use of robots for manual labor.

The series reached a finale of sorts in ''Literature/RobotsAndEmpire'', set two centuries after ''Literature/TheRobotsOfDawn''; the story mainly served to merge Daneel's story into the MythArc of Asimov's "Galactic Empire" and ''Literature/{{Foundation}}'' stories.