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A review by nvmsmd
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
5.0
This book was hilarious, clever, and years ahead of its time.
SPOILERS
Let’s start with the character who is essentially the protagonist: Susan, a fucking robopsychologist, and a badass. She has been given the liberty to be authoritative, assertive, and unemotional and that is traditionally not bestowed upon women without making them unlikeable or antagonist-ic. Susan is a great protagonist to follow. Snippets of her life from when she was a student to an old woman are fascinating. "Strong independent unapologetic female protagonist" is the current buzz that people still don't understand. Asimov delivered marvelously. We don’t follow a female protagonist with legs for days and boobs spilling out in her combat uniform as she fights robots. No, we see Susan, an old woman, who cares only for robots and is passionately involved in her line of work. Her mind and her no-nonsense logical deductions are a treat to read. The only flaw - the mind reader story, her male counterparts are given professional passions and conflict whereas she was given a romantic interest and failure, but it wasn't too bad and one is allowed to have romance. I loved the fact that she basically killed the robot in cold blood at the end.
Donovan and Powell are my favorite duo. They are just stuck in impossible and hilarious situations and have to figure their way out using very genius and out-of-the-box thinking. More often than not, they are helplessly stuck before they can find their way out of the solution. Their banter is fun and solutions are just so perfectly simple yet so creative and mind-blowing that their stories quickly became my favorite.
I was really captured by the first story of Robbie. That story melted my heart and gave me all the ooey-gooey feelings. Throughout the book, Asimov displays an incredible understanding of human emotion (and robot emotion) and has the ability to weave these emotions to elicit the desired feeling out of the reader. Wasn't even 50 pages in the book when I knew that it was shaping up to be one of my all-time favorites.
These short stories were written separately from the 1940s to 1950. Factually these stories are older than Indian independence. And yet, the writing is fresh. The stories are still great sci-fi and not dated at all. The characters are all unproblematic. I am in awe of this book. Instant 5 stars.
SPOILERS
Let’s start with the character who is essentially the protagonist: Susan, a fucking robopsychologist, and a badass. She has been given the liberty to be authoritative, assertive, and unemotional and that is traditionally not bestowed upon women without making them unlikeable or antagonist-ic. Susan is a great protagonist to follow. Snippets of her life from when she was a student to an old woman are fascinating. "Strong independent unapologetic female protagonist" is the current buzz that people still don't understand. Asimov delivered marvelously. We don’t follow a female protagonist with legs for days and boobs spilling out in her combat uniform as she fights robots. No, we see Susan, an old woman, who cares only for robots and is passionately involved in her line of work. Her mind and her no-nonsense logical deductions are a treat to read. The only flaw - the mind reader story, her male counterparts are given professional passions and conflict whereas she was given a romantic interest and failure, but it wasn't too bad and one is allowed to have romance. I loved the fact that she basically killed the robot in cold blood at the end.
Donovan and Powell are my favorite duo. They are just stuck in impossible and hilarious situations and have to figure their way out using very genius and out-of-the-box thinking. More often than not, they are helplessly stuck before they can find their way out of the solution. Their banter is fun and solutions are just so perfectly simple yet so creative and mind-blowing that their stories quickly became my favorite.
I was really captured by the first story of Robbie. That story melted my heart and gave me all the ooey-gooey feelings. Throughout the book, Asimov displays an incredible understanding of human emotion (and robot emotion) and has the ability to weave these emotions to elicit the desired feeling out of the reader. Wasn't even 50 pages in the book when I knew that it was shaping up to be one of my all-time favorites.
These short stories were written separately from the 1940s to 1950. Factually these stories are older than Indian independence. And yet, the writing is fresh. The stories are still great sci-fi and not dated at all. The characters are all unproblematic. I am in awe of this book. Instant 5 stars.