History Literature / TheCavesOfSteel

It is in this New York that a murder is committed: the victim is a Spacer, one of the residents of Spacetown, the Spacer outpost in New York. It is suspected that one of the motives was anti-robot sentiments; the victim was a roboticist who was working on the large-scale introduction of robot labor into Earth's economy, a desire opposed by most of the populace - sometimes to the point of terrorist aggression. If the murderer is not found--fast--a major diplomatic incident looms.

And she kept Lije Baley from sinking down

* RobotMe: Daneel was made to be identical to his creator. This becomes the basis of one wrong theory on part of Lije [[spoiler:and is the critical component in solving the murder - the murderer was after Daneel and accidentally shot his creator instead.]]
* ScienceMarchesOn: Earth has become so overpopulated that almost all of the Earth's surface area must be converted to farmland, with the populace stuffed into overcrowded mega-cities where a socialist government carefully rations food, water, and resources and people are lucky if they have a ''sink'' of their own in their apartment. The total population of this teeming dystopia? Eight billion, which is just a billion or so (give or take) from the actual world population in 2011.The novel was written before the Green Revolution, which dramatically increased Earth's carrying capacity.

* ToBeLawfulOrGood: Understanding that the conflict even ''exists'', much less wrestling with it, is a big part of R. Daneel's CharacterDevelopment. See Concepts Are Cheap, above. Early on, Daneel considers the phrase "an unjust law" to be a tautology - justice is the enforcement of the Law, therefore a law cannot possibly be unjust.

* UncannyValley: In-universe, one of the reasons why robots - at least the current generation - are so unpopular on Earth; they are clunky mechanical units with disturbing facsimiles of permanently-smiling human faces on their "heads." Daneel is an attempt by his creator to avert this.

* PokeThePoodle: [[spoiler:Elijah's defense of the biblical Jezebel destroyed his wife Jesse's self-image as a naughty girl. So to prove herself, she joins the revolutionary Medievalists... or at least a society they operate for bored housewives that meets for snacks and the occasional revolutionary speaker. Jessie does tell the group that she thinks Daneel is a robot, but she almost immediately panics and wonders [[WhatHaveIDone what she's done]].]]

* OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions: The Spacers have abandoned religion long ago. Lije, meanwhile, can quote scripture from memory, but exactly how religious he actually is isn't clear.

* NeverAcceptedInHisHometown: The Robots were created, developed and mass produced right on Earth almost three thousand years before the beginning of the novel, and 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.

* OnlyElectricSheepAreCheap: Natural (non-processed) food is a luxury good.

* ToBeLawfulOrGood: Understanding that the conflict even ''exists'', much less wrestling with it, is a big part of R. Daneel's CharacterDevelopment.

* OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions: The Spacers have abandoned religion long ago.

* CyberPunk: The City [[UnbuiltTrope anticipates]] the dystopian urban landscape of CyberPunk, almost 30 years before BladeRunner and WilliamGibson, but it was not necessarily intended to be dystopian. The idea of a vast, totally enclosed city did not bother Asimov at all (See AuthorAppeal).

* ToBeLawfulOrGood: Understanding that the conflict even ''exists'', much less wrestling with it, is a big part of R. Daneel's {{character development}}.

* WhenTheClockStrikesTwelve: Near the end of the book, [[spoiler:Daneel notifies Lije that, since he's gathered the information Fastolfe wanted about Earther society, the investigation is being ended that day. Desperately worried about the consequences failure would have for his career, and with a brand-new EurekaMoment running through his mind, Baley manages to persuade his robot partner that they're still on the case until the day ends at midnight. Sure enough, they manage to extract a confession from the murderer right at the stroke of 12.]]

* MurderByMistake: [[spoiler: Dr. Sarton was killed by a shot intended for R. Daneel (who was built to resembled his creator).]]

* NotWithTheSafetyOnYouWont: Elijah is understandably disturbed when the ostensibly ThreeLawsCompliant Daneel resolves the potential riot at the shoe store by threatening to use a lethal weapon. Daneel explains to his partner that the weapon was not loaded, and that even if it had been loaded, the futuristic equivalent of the firing pin was missing; after all, if it had been otherwise, it would have been possible for him to ''accidentally'' injure a human being, something Daneel finds unthinkable.

* FairplayWhodunnit: Largely written to prove a ScienceFiction FairplayWhodonnit was possible, in defiance of one of the rules of FairplayWhodunnits about technology.

* FairplayWhodunnit

A 1954 ScienceFiction / CrimeFiction novel by IsaacAsimov, and the first novel in his "Robot trilogy".

* 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.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: First, the Earthmen's treatment of robots is reminiscent of racism. The people of Earth resent robots who are taking jobs away from humans, and refer to them as "boy", as minorities were called during the Jim Crow era. Significantly, the robot who replaces a worker on the police force is named R. Sammy, and "Sammy" was a racial slur used against people from India.
** Also, Earth's resentment of the Spacers and their immigration restrictions might be seen as how people in Third World countries resent our own restrictions.

* FantasticRacism: Robots are addressed as "boy," lack permission to travel in the high-class means of transportation and are treated with general contempt by Earth's inhabitants. One of the major bones of contention is that they have come to Earth and are taking jobs away from the local humans.

* UncannyValley: In-universe, one of the reasons why robots - at least the current generation - are so unpopular on Earth; they are clunky mechanical units with disturbing facsimiles of permanently-smiling human faces on their "heads." Daneel is an attempt by his creator to avert this.

* NotWithTheSafetyOnYouWont: Elijah is understandably disturbed when the ostensibly ThreeLawsCompliant Daneel resolves the potential riot at the shoe store by threatening to use a lethal weapon. Daneel explains to his partner that the weapon was not loaded.

A ScienceFiction / CrimeFiction novel by IsaacAsimov, and the first novel in his "Robot trilogy".

* AlwaysSomeoneBetter: Daneel is stronger than Lije, smarter than Lije, more {{badass}} than Lije, and never needs to rest or eat; Lije has to worry about the robot solving the case before him, and every aspect of the robot's superiority is seen as a threat to his job.

* NotWithTheSafetyOnYouWont: Elijah is understandably disturbed when the ostensibly ThreeLawsCompliant Daneel resolves the potential riot at the shoe store by threatening to use a lethal weapon if the mob doesn't disperse. Daneel explains to his partner that the weapon wasn't loaded.

* AlwaysSomeoneBetter: Daneel is stronger than Lije, smarter than Lije, and never needs to rest or eat; Lije has to worry about the robot solving the case before him, and every aspect of the robot's superiority is seen as a threat to his job.

''Caves of Steel'' takes place in a future New York. On the overpopulated future Earth, cities are [[MegaCity gigantic metropolises]] [[DomedHometown encased under steel domes]], where people are living in cramped conditions and subsisting 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 most work being done by robots.

It is in this New York that a murder is committed: the victim is a Spacer, one of the residents of Spacetown, the Spacer outpost in New York. It is suspected that one of the motives were anti-robot sentiments: the victim was a roboticist who was working on the large-scale introduction of robot labor into Earth's economy, a desire opposed by most of the populace - sometimes to the point of terrorist aggression. If the murderer is not found--fast--a major diplomatic incident looms.

The investigator is Elijah "Lije" Baley, whose Spacer-assigned partner will be an android, R. Daneel Olivaw, a new type of robot externally indistinguishable from a human.

The opposition between Lije's impulsiveness and unorthodox methods, and Daneel's pure logical thinking and adherence to the law and procedure, is a theme throughout much of the book. Another theme is the nature of the society of Earth's Cities and how stable it is in the long run.

''Literature/TheCavesOfSteel'' 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.

Despite being named after a different Asimov book, the 2004 film ''Film/IRobot'' is actually more closely based on ''Literature/TheCavesOfSteel''.

* AlwaysSomeoneBetter: Daneel; Lije has to worry about the robot solving the case before him, and every aspect of the robot's superiority is seen as a threat to his job.

* 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, 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.

* CyberPunk: The City [[UnbuiltTrope anticipates]] the dystopian urban landscape of CyberPunk, almost 30 years before BladeRunner and WilliamGibson. Though it wasn't necessarily intended to be dystopian. The idea of a vast, totally enclosed city didn't bother Asimov at all. (See Author Appeal.)

* FantasticRacism: Robots are addressed as "boy," lack permission to travel in the high-class means of transportation and are treated with general contempt by Earth's inhabitants. One of the major bones of contention is that have come to Earth and are taking jobs away from the local humans.

* NeverAcceptedInHisHometown: The Robots were created, developed and mass produced right on Earth almost three thousand years before the beginning of the novel, and were integral in the technological revolution that lead to space-travel, food for whole plant 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.

* PokeThePoodle: [[spoiler:Elijah's defense of the biblical Jezebel destroyed his wife Jesse's self-image as a naughty girl. So to prove herself, she joins the revolutionary Medievalists... or at least a society they operate for bored housewives that meets for snacks and the occasional revolutionary speaker. Jessie does tell the group that she think's Daneel is a robot, but she almost immediately panics and wonders [[WhatHaveIDone what she's done]].]]

* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: Earth has become so overpopulated that almost all of the Earth's surface area must be converted to farmland, with the populace stuffed into overcrowded mega-cities where a socialist government carefully rations food, water, and resources and people are lucky if they have a ''sink'' of their own in their apartment. The total population of this teeming dystopia? ''Eight billion'', which is just a billion or so (give or take) from the actual world population in 2010. Note that they were written before the Green Revolution, which dramatically increased Earth's carrying capacity, which perhaps makes this less a case of "No Sense of Scale" and more of "ScienceMarchesOn".

* WeWillHavePerfectHealthInTheFuture: Most notable in the friction between Spacers and Earthmen. Earthers have lifespans comparable to 20th century Americans, where the eugenically-perfected Spacers tend not to experience "middle age" until turning 250 or so. They enforce this by carefully control the microbes introduced to their worlds from Earthers, and look down on the filthy disgusting shortlived Earthmen. The Spacers' weakened immune systems mean that when an Earthman visits, the visitor has to be thoroughly sterilized and most of the Spacers wear gloves and nose-plugs and keep their distance.