Robot Dreams is another of the robot short story books from Asimov. It is a bit deceptive though and frankly quite annoying because only one of the stories in the book is a robot story, and its not very long.I am of course ignoring the robot stories that already appear in I, Robot and The Complete Robot. The rest are unrelated short stories by Asimov that aren't about robots, and aren't even consistent with the universe that the Foundation books exist in. That's what makes it so annoying for Asimov to recommend that you read the book as part of the extended Foundation series. Grumble.

Don't get me wrong, the other stories are fine, its just that they're not the robot stories that I was led to believe they would be.

http://www.stillhq.com/book/Isaac_Asi... ( )

The entire impetus for this collection was a piece of artwork by Ralph McQuarrie - which eventually became the cover painting for the book. Containing one new short story (Robot Dreams) and a bunch of reprints of Asimov's short fiction, the book is a very good compilation of his work. Oddly, despite the title, only a handful of the stories in the volume are related to robots, although that doesn't detract from the quality of the finished product.

The new story in the book concerns a robot that is dreaming somewhat disturbing dreams. It features a return of Susan Calvin, a figure who shows up in many of Asimov's robot stories, and, as typical of the robot stories, deals with the effects of the Three Laws of Robotics. Which it isn't one of the best robot stories, it is still one of the better ones.

The remaining stories are drawn from some of the most famous works by Asimov: Does a Bee Care, The Ugly Little Boy, Spell My Name With an S, and other stories pull from Asimov's consistently well-written body of short fiction. Unlike his later attempts to link up all his novels in a somewhat unsatisfying manner, Asimov's short fiction never seemed to suffer, and remained strong throughout his career. This collection of short fiction is no exception. ( )

Isaac Asimov's best robot book: This book is a compilation of most of his robot stories with a brief introduction and some brilliantly written essays at the end exploring the future of robotics (the word "robotics" was coined by Asimov himself!)and their place with mankind. The book has beautifull illustrations throughout by the artist Ralph Mcquarrie, the star wars artist. The only bad point is that several of the stories occur in I, Robot.

All stories herein are Asimov written and vary from good to excellent. Many of them feature a computer called MultiVac, the computer of Asimov's pulp magazine day. It took up a large warehouse bay and cost a fortune to create. Even the bard of science fiction couldn't imagine a computer the size of a package of cigarettes that could contain thousand sof books. This is a must read for Asimov fans. ( )

Regarding "Franchise":

A couple of paragraphs in, I was hooked. A futuristic tale involving a presidential election… this should be interesting, given our current world. Cut to the date of the vote in Asimov’s story: November 4, 2008. I begin to wonder how close to home this tale will be, given Asimov’s foresight as to so many other issues in our current world.

This story is too perfect for me to ruin it for you. Go find a copy of it. While we don’t have a Multivac crunching numbers and evaluating data for each election, I believe that Asimov was closer to our current truth than I would like in a perfect world. Elected officials are not chosen by issues or counts as they should be. I think the 2000 and 2004 elections could be considered evidence of this.

I am not a political activist. I do not want to be; I don’t even want to pretend to be. But I have to pose one question to you: How long until all of our elections are based on how one person feels about the price of eggs? ( )