History Literature / TheCavesOfSteel

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

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

* DroppedGlasses: Critical to the case.

* EasilyForgiven: Baley's first attempt at TheSummmation turns out to be a disaster, and he fully expects to be taken off the case given the need to avoid antagonising the Spacers. However the Spacers are impressed that Baley was willing to talk straight with them, and insist he stay on the case. [[spoiler:Commissioner Enderby also isn't annoyed, because he was relieved that Baley was so off target about what really happened.]]

* EatingMachine: Daneel, thanks to a compartment hidden within his stomach, all to better impersonate a human. He does not derive any actual nutrition from the food, and needs to regularly empty his stomach sack to prevent the food from spoiling and emitting an unpleasant odor. Daneel promises that the food is still edible when Lije misses a meal, but Baley refuses the offer.

* RuleOfThrees: Three times Elijah thinks he's solved the crime, but is only right the third time. [[spoiler:1) There was no murder, only a Spacer conspiracy -- the Spacers destroyed a robot lookalike and Daneel is actually Dr. Sarton pretending to be a robot. 2) Daneel isn't bound by the Three Laws and committed the murder. 3) The murderer meant to destroy Daneel, but killed Dr. Sarton by mistake.]]

* HaveYouToldAnyoneElse: Elijah make sure to have the Commissioner listening in remotely when he goes to confront the Spacers with what he thinks is a conspiracy. [[spoiler:He's wrong, and ironically the Commissioner is the real murderer. When Elijah confronts him, he has Daneel with him to relay what's happening to the Spacers for the same reason.]]

* RuleOfThrees: Three times Elijah thinks he's solved the crime, but is only right the third time. [[spoiler:1) There was no murder -- the Spacers killed a robot lookalike and Daneel is actually Dr. Sarton pretending to be a robot. 2) Daneel isn't bound by the Three Laws and committed the murder. 3) The murderer meant to destroy Daneel, but killed Dr. Sarton by mistake.]]

* RuleOfThrees: Three times Elijah thinks he's solved the crime, but is only right the third time.

* OneRiotOneRanger: When facing a potential anti-robot riot, Daneel insists on repressing it himself instead of waiting for a squad car. He does with a BrandishmentBluff, threatening to use deadly force even though he is ThreeLawsCompliant. As no-one knows he's a robot, no-one is willing to call his bluff. It does however increase Elijah's suspicion of him, as a robot should not be able to contemplate such an act without suffering a breakdown.

* OneRiotOneRanger: When facing a potential anti-robot riot, Daneel insists on repressing it himself instead of waiting for a squad car. He does with a BrandishmentBluff, threatening to use deadly force even though he is ThreeLawsComplaint. As no-one knows he's a robot, no-one is willing to call his bluff. It does however increase Elijah's suspicion of him, as a robot should not be able to contemplate such an act without suffering a breakdown.

* OnlyElectricSheepAreCheap: Natural (non-processed) food is a luxury good, to such an extent that when Baley eats a real apple, he finds it disconcerting even ''before'' he bites right into the core and gets a mouthful of seeds. Apple, in his view, comes in the form of a sauce or paste, not some weird orb that was probably dangling off a tree a few days ago.

** Spacers view humans as primitive, disease-ridden savages, and in turn humans resent the Spacers for their long lives, wealth and luxury.

* AuthorAppeal: The crowded underground cities of Earth would be hellish to a claustrophobe, but Asimov was a claustro''phile''. Spending their lives in these Cities has made this condition much more common in the population, and fear of wide open spaces has become the societal norm on Earth.

* WomensMysteries: Baley, who'd grown up without a mother, was ''shocked'' to learn that his wife talks to other women in Personal, the public washroom. For males, the custom is not to even look at other men when using its facilities.

* WomensMysteries: Baley, who'd grown up without a mother, was ''shocked'' to learn that his wife talks to other women in Personal, the public washroom.

** 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 mot a popular book among Spacers.

''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.

* 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.
* AndroidsAndDetectives: As the UrExample, it established many of the conventions of this trope, despite the lack of many traditional CyberPunk elements (unsurprising, as the book was written before the advent of microcomputers, let alone the Internet).
* ArtificialHuman: Daneel, who is a revolutionary (and controversial), first generation "humaniform" robot. He is designed to pass for human and can even eat (although he does not actually digest the food, just stores it in a sack for later disposal). His personality could use some work though, since the fact that he is TheSpock can be a giveaway that he is not really a human.

** Elijah and his wife Jezebel have {{meaningful name}}s. Their story is referenced when she is introduced, and Jezebel's character is an important part of her personality.

** 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 isn't exactly a popular book among Spacers..

* AuthorAppeal: The crowded underground cities of Earth would be hellish to a claustrophobe, but Asimov was a claustro''phile''. Spending their lives in these Cities has made this condition much more common in the population, in fact, fear of wide open spaces has become the societal norm on Earth.
* BatmanGambit: Several.
** The Spacers (or at least Sarton and Fastolfe's faction) were deliberately trying to destabilize Earth's economy by "encouraging" the use of robots. They wanted to create a large population of unrooted, dissatisfied people who would be willing to become the foundation of a new wave of colonists, avoiding the flaws of both Earth and Spacer societies.
** Daneel was created to be an undercover observer of Earth society to discover the problems in the plan before Sarton's murder. [[spoiler:Repurposing Daneel as a detective was primarily an excuse for him to fulfill his original mission.]]

* 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.
* CantBatheWithoutAWeapon: Police regulations require Elijah to keep his blaster with him at all times, even in the shower (in a waterproof holster).

* ConceptsAreCheap: Played with. When told that Daneel is programmed with a "justice circuit," Elijah claims this is impossible because justice is too abstract and hard to define. However, Daneel has a much simpler definition of justice, "That which exists when all laws are enforced." [[spoiler:He does develop a more nuanced view by the end of the novel.]]
* CoversAlwaysLie: The depiction of New York City on at least some editions of the novel give the impression of it basically being lots of skyscrapers, with plenty of large open spaces hundreds of feet high and wide, only with an (unseen) roof. That is at odds with the actual description in the novel. It would be difficult to reconcile people suffering from severe agoraphobia if they lived in an indoor city where you could stand on open balconies and look out over a vast cityscape. In the novel simple ''windows'' are a rarity, and most areas have no "outside" to look at beyond their walls anyway.

* CyberPunk: The City [[UnbuiltTrope anticipates]] the dystopian urban landscape of CyberPunk, almost 30 years before ''Film/BladeRunner'' and Creator/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).

* ElvesVersusDwarves: While both human beings, the Spacers and Earthmen share many stereotypes of elves and dwarves, respectively. The Spacers are [[OurElvesAreBetter proud, elegant, long-lived people with superior technology]] while the Earthmen are [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame conservative cave-dwellers]]. The main conflict of the story is between these two factions.

* 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. Significantly, R. Sammy may have been named for a racial slur once used to describe people from India.
** There is also the prejudice Spacers have against Earthpeople, although some are better than others about dealing with it.

* GoAndSinNoMore: Said word-for-word by Daneel to [[spoiler:the police chief.]]
* IronicName: The Spacers. Despite their proud claim to the name and heritage, most Spacers never leave the planets they are born on, even though they live for centuries and have ready access to starships. In fact, they have become so risk-averse and unwilling to tolerate ''any'' discomfort that they are wholly incapable of carrying out further space exploration or colonization. Doctor Fastolfe is fully aware of this problem, and hopes to combine robots with humans from Earth to restart expansion into the galaxy since his own people simply cannot be persuaded to do so themselves.

* LivingLieDetector: Daneel is one, though he is not technically living. His 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: Subverted, despite being true, because Enderby DID murder the victim unintentionally, believing his target to be Sarton's doppelganger robot rather than the good doctor himself.]]
* MaleRestroomEtiquette: There is a strict taboo that no one speaks to each other in the Men's Personals. Women's Personals are quite the opposite though.

* NeverAcceptedInHisHometown: 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.

* 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.
** Both are probably something of an AuthorAvatar, since Asimov was an atheist, but very well read on the Bible (among many other topics).
* OutOfCharacterAlert: Baley is told that Jessie is associating with unsavory people. He knows it isn't true because she supposedly provided her name as "Jezebel", a name that Jessie avoids using.

* PopulationControl: Earth's enormous population is only barely managed, and the quality of life, while not terrible, isn't very appealing. It is shown that producing enough food to feed the population is an ongoing challenge where even small missteps can result in starvation.

* SuperPoweredRobotMeterMaids: Averted; at one point Jessie worries that Daneel is listening in on their conversation. Elijah says that any unusual abilities would hamper Daneel's ability to pass as human.

* 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 an oxymoron -- justice is the enforcement of the Law, therefore a law cannot possibly be unjust.

* WanderingJew: The legend of the Wandering Londoner appears to be the equivalent for Baley.

* PovertyFood: In ''The Caves of Steel'' and the sequels, the lowest classes have to substitute on some bland yeast mush. The entire Earth qualifies, in a way, being poor and overcrowded compared to the rich and spoiled Spacers - even natural food, rather than yeast, is always eaten processed, and only in Spacer cuisine does one encounter things like whole apples, eggs with visible yolk, etc.

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 starting [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By53fLlxrjE here]] (the cards required for the game can be found here[[https://archive.org/details/20081021195902robotsMed]]), as well as a review/riff by [[WebVideo/TheSpoonyExperiment The Spoony One]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGEuFaGkG1A here.]]

The series reached a finale of sorts in ''Literature/RobotsAndEmpire'', set years (maybe about a century or so) after ''Literature/TheRobotsOfDawn''; the story mainly served to merge Daneel's story into the MythArc of Asimov's "Galactic Empire" and ''Literature/{{Foundation}}'' stories.

This story was adapted for a VCR game by [[Creator/EastmanKodak Kodak]] in 1988. You can watch the movie itself on Website/YouTube starting [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By53fLlxrjE here]], as well as a review/riff by [[WebVideo/TheSpoonyExperiment The Spoony One]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGEuFaGkG1A here.]]