Robot Dreams

Robot Dreams is a collection of stories from the latter half of Asimov's career, studded with some genuine gems (The Last Question, The Ugly Little Boy, Franchise, Hostess), and display his considerable amount of talent. There are a few robot stories at the beginning, but this book centers mostly around Multivac, the great mainframe computer, and a tingling sense of cosmological alienation. Humankind repeatedly turns over vital creative and communal tasks to invisible and arcane machinery, separated from the great masses by a cadre of technician-priests. Or it turns out that our whole civilization is an experiment by cold and vasty intelligence, and we are nearing the point where they decide data collection is over. Asimov is usually show more seen as one of the cuddlier of the 'greats', less militaristic than Heinlein, less mathematical than Clarke. A more thorough assessment reveals a stark and chilly author, with a deep streak of misanthropy.

And for my own records, that Asimov story about using humans trained in mental math to replace expensive military computers is "The Feeling of Power." show less

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2712342.html

I have fallen out of love with Asimov much more than any of the other authors whose work I inhaled as a teenager, mainly because I hate cute robots, for which he may not be single-handedly responsible but for which he clearly bears the lion's share of the blame. However, this collection went some way to reconciling me. The stories I liked least were those I had read last year in The Complete Robot; I remembered reading about half of the others from my teenage years; and the rest were new to me, as far as I could remember. I was particularly struck by "Hostess", in which, for once, Asimov looks at an unhappy marriage from the point of view of an intelligent woman rather than an intelligent man; show more also by the alternate history twist of "Spell My Name With An S". And both "The Martian Way" and "Franchise" retained more of their attraction than I had hoped. It is also beautifully illustrated by Ralph McQuarry, which certainly helped my appreciation of the book. I started it with uneasy anticipation of disappointment, but actually was glad to have read it. show less

Surprise!

Davvero non mi aspettavo quello che mi sono trovata sotto gli occhi. Asimov mi ha sorpreso. Credevo fosse un autore di fantascienza più attento ad immaginare i progressi della tecnologia che altro. Invece, accanto a spunti futuristici curiosi, fantasiosi ed attraenti, non dimentica il "core" dell'umanità, quel "nucleo" imprescindibile dell'orma umana che rende le cose uniche e non asettiche come potrebbero essere le procedure robotizzate. I "sogni di robot" sono sogni molto molto umanoidi...

Brilliant. Considering some of these short stories were written in the 1940s, Asimov is shockingly prophetic about our time - not in terms of specific technological advances (though he nails a few of those as well), but more in terms of how 21st century humans would think and interact with that technology and with each other.

As most folks note, there are surprisingly few robot stories within, though the first few in the collection and the title set the reader up to expect more. To be fair, there are a fair number of stories here focused on a computer AI, often with either malevolent intent or cluelessness about humans amounting to the same thing. Some of the stories are dated, not in their Science Fiction quotient but in the provinciality of the human characters. Asimov's rare imagination is regularly on display. Another cool element, the illustrations were created by Ralph McQuarrie, who worked on the original Star Wars movies and won an Academy Award for special effects for Coccon. They are a nice addition to the book.

3 1/2 bones!!!

Dang. Many of these are *not* robot stories. I mean, I love Asimov, period, but I really wanted a big old sustained dose of interpretations & misinterpretations of the three laws....

Also, most of the stories seemed (and probably were) familiar. Time to let this one go....

(I, Robot, is the first collection of short stories. Second is The Rest of the Robots. Robot Dreams only has one new story in it. The Complete Robot is reported to be truly complete.)

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 show more 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? show less