This is one of my favorite works by Isaac Asimov. I absolutely love these stories -- each one is so inventive, and they stay with you for so long after you read them. I think it's really easy to write an unsatisfying "short story" -- so often the ones I read aren't stories at all. These are, though. They're all so well-polished. ( )

I watched the movie before I read the book and was pleased to see how different they both were. The book is amazing! I appreciated how they dealt with the dilemmas faced by a robot manufacturing company who had to solve problems related to the code imprinted in every robot. Asimov is an extrememly talented and imaginative author. ( )

The movie really didn't have a thing to do with this book; a very good book ( )

In the interest of avoiding redundancy I will not enumerate the three laws of robotics. What I would like to note, however, is the seeming simplicity of these laws. It seems a difficult task to create a rich, believable, and interesting world from such basic premises, but Asimov manages to do this with ease. I could easily see this as a viable (and not necessarily even distant) future for mankind, with a few tweaks here and there. Not only was this book rich, believable, and interesting, but more than anything, it was ironically HUMAN for a book with a focus on robots. This mainly comes in through the character of Susan Calvin and her compassion and identification with the robots she works on. The capacity for emotion in robots is also explored with interesting repercussions.

Given the numerous narratives and storylines involved, a brief plot summary is not entirely feasible. In general, the book as a whole could probably best be described as a foundation upon which Asimov might build with his later novels in the robot series. It gives the reader a groundwork understanding of Asimov’s universe. The book takes the form of disjointed short stories exploring the myriad manipulations the three laws might undergo, but the stories are united in the person of Susan Calvin. Calvin was a major figure in the development of robotics and has reached retirement. She is being interviewed, and at the prompting of the reporter, she digresses into telling these stories, each of which had special meaning for her both in her professional career and in her personal interest and investment in robotics. The stories I especially enjoyed were “Reason” and “Little Lost Robot”, although all were good on the whole. ( )

As it was written in the 1950s, I love the antiquaited futurism. In circa 2040 they are all still smoking, using paper and celluloid film and working with "calculating machines".
A string of short stories told through the eyes of Dr. Calvin who is the world's premier "robopyschologist" and inventor of these intelligen robots.
Very different to the film, so worth reading if you have seen the film first. ( )