What’s a Little Monotony?: The Mundane Foundation of Isaac Asimov’s Robot Stories
Jonathan Hay © Jonathan Hay, 2020
It is instructive to note that the billionaire cies is plainly significant. Fiona Hobden as- Elon Musk’s endeavours to colonise Mars are tutely emphasises that the past of our species heavily influenced by Isaac Asimov’s science is “not a real place we could visit, if only we fiction. Musk lists Asimov’s Foundation trilo- had a time-machine [...] Rather it is the mal- gy as one of the favourite series of his child- leable, increasingly nuanced, and ever- hood (in Vance, 2016: 33), and he chose to changing product of our imaginative engage- send a digital copy of it into heliocentric orbit ment” with the contemporary and surviving along with his Tesla Roadster in 2018 representations of history which comprise the (Gartenberg, 2018: online). The statement only permanent artefact of the past (Hobden, this launch made is apparent; Musk consid- 2009: 149). As she states, via their positions ers himself to be engendering the telos of as popular cultural productions, SF texts set Asimov’s SF writings in our contemporary in the past of our species actively intervene in world by paving the way for the colonisation the recorded histories with which their nar- of the solar system by humanity. As far as ratives are interfaced, and so imaginatively Musk seems to be concerned, Asimov’s SF vi- and substantially alter their viewers’ under- sions are becoming reality, and this perspec- standing of the history of Homo Sapiens. tive draws a productive parallel with Asi- In this article, I argue that the converse is mov’s own reflections on the prognostic true for texts set in the future of our species, qualities of his SF works in his introduction such as Asimov’s robot stories. Specifically, a to The Complete Robot. parallel and analogous process results from Asimov confesses his surprise that Joseph readers’ imaginative engagement with SF Engelberger, the owner of what was then the texts in respect to their perspectival outlook largest robot manufacturer in the world, had upon both our species’ present and future. grown “interested in robots in the 1940s Via their cognitive engagement with futuris- when [...] reading the robot stories of his fel- tic SFnal (or science-fictional) discourses such low Columbian Isaac Asimov” (Asimov, as Asimov’s future history series, readers are 2018a: 3). Although he was unaware of the encouraged to recognise the profound extent influence they would subsequently exert on to which their own contemporary situation speculative currents of thought at the time he within a technologized everyday lifeworld in- wrote them, by writing his robot stories Asi- forms the prospective cognitive frame of ref- mov, as he himself realized, started “a chain erence of our species. Through their conspic- of events that is changing the face of the uously mundane qualities, Asimov’s robot world” (Asimov, 2018a: 4). Certainly, the in- stories dramatise a movement beyond the fluence which popular texts of the SF genre technological present, and contribute towards bear upon the technological future of our spe- a post-humanistic conception of humanity. As
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I shall demonstrate in this article—through the two categories teetering on the brink of the close textual analysis of The Complete “collapsing into a unity” (2005: 199). Robot, The Positronic Man, The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, and The Robots of Dawn—the “consciousness-expanding” (Hob- In this article, I argue that den, 2009: 149) or post-humanistic aspects of Asimov’s robot stories are cognitively ground- the converse is true for ed, via those texts’ reinscription of mundane aspects of their readers’ lifeworlds into their texts set in the future of SFnal ones. The sense of wonder evoked by the robots of these texts is not displaced by our species, such as Asimov’s emphasis upon the mundane, ra- ther, he demonstrates that the mundane Asimov’s robot stories. lifeworld forms the essential foundation of their SFnal nova. Since Asimov repeatedly underscores the extent to which robots are a banal aspect of the lifeworlds of many of the characters who The Complete Robot: Everyday Begin- inhabit The Complete Robot, the novel figure nings of the robot necessarily decays in novelty as the collection proceeds. Although Donald M. As Asimov suggests in the introduction to his Hassler proposes that the Three Laws of Ro- extensive short story collection The Complete botics “seem hardly profound or a great in- Robot (1982), the influence of his SFnal sto- vention of the imagination”, and adds that ries contributed towards the eventuation of “[t]hey are neutral” speculative devices, their our present lifeworld, in which algorithmic author certainly gets a huge deal of cognitive technologies are commonplace. Asimov’s be- mileage out of them (1991: 42). Asimov re- nevolent rendering of robots therefore con- works the robotic novum throughout the doz- tributed to their genesis in physical reality. ens of stories in the collection (written be- As Adam Roberts states, whereas “robots had tween 1939 and 1977) by making the robotic previously been, almost exclusively, insensate characters of each specific story distinct from or dangerous embodiments of the threat of those of others, in some manner which be- technology, Asimov imagined artificially con- comes a fundamental component of that sto- structed and intelligent robots as not only ry’s distinct plot. In each story, the Three humane, but in many ways as more humane Laws are either reworked, broken slightly, or than humanity” (2005: 198, original empha- exemplified in a new context.1 sis). This is not, however, to suggest that Asimov’s rendering of robots centres around —————————— 1 an intractable binarism. As Roberts clarifies, The Three Laws of Robotics are as follows: First Law; a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inac- Asimov is not interested in theorising that tion, allow a human being to come to harm. Second Law; robots are superior to humans; he is interest- a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings ed in the interstices formed through the het- except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Third Law; a robot must protect its own existence erogeneous interactions between the two as long as such protection does not conflict with the First supposedly distinct entities, and at times, or Second laws. Neither Asimov nor John W. Campbell, with problematising the ostensible natural- the editor of many of his early stories, wanted to take full credit for the formulation of the Three Laws. As Asimov ness of the robot/human dichotomy, to show comments within In Memory Yet Green, ultimately, per-
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Thus, Asimov demonstrates that the Gloria’s father, meanwhile, is preoccupied Three Laws are not entirely prescriptive, but with ensuring that he has a “good hearty rather, their ostensibly deterministic funda- dinner below the hatches; a nice, soft, dilapi- ment actually gives rise to many different dated couch on which to sprawl; a copy of The behaviours and responses in practice. This Times; slippered feet and shirtless chest” complexity formulates something akin to a (145) every Sunday afternoon. As Joseph F. robot “psychology” (Auger, 2009: 22), whose Patrouch Jr. correctly states, all George Wes- elucidation is drawn out over the course of ton wants “is to be left alone so he can read the robot stories and novels. As the robot his paper” (1978: 38), and he therefore ig- novum inevitably decays throughout these nores his wife’s concerns about Robbie’s ca- stories accumulatively, the rhetorical and pabilities in order to pursue his bourgeois narrative positionality of robots antithetically routine. Despite him living in a technologized becomes more complex. Yet, where the com- society where positronic robots are not only plexity of robots increases in the series, hu- affordable, but advanced enough so as to be man psychology becomes a signifier of the capable of undertaking childcare duties, they banal in parallel, as the cognitive capacities are a technology unworthy of sustained at- of our species become increasingly inferior tention, from his habitually preoccupied comparatively. mindset. Therefore, Gloria’s desire to be reu- In his earliest robot story “Robbie” (1940), nited with her robotic friend seems insignifi- Asimov emphasises the eponymous robot’s cant to him, since he considers robots to be situation within the cultural gestalt of the nothing more than practical contrivances to diegetic world by laying particular emphasis facilitate the smooth performance of menial upon characters’ phenomenological perspec- tasks. When Gloria unexpectedly mentions tives. When Robbie spins his eight-year-old Robbie a month after he has been returned to owner Gloria around in the air, the narrative his manufacturer, George cannot suppress “a notes that “for her the world fell away for a strangled gasp [...] then a bout of choking moment” (141, emphasis mine), highlighting coughs” (153) at the realisation that his that there are two characters with a perspec- daughter continues to expend thought upon a tival outlook on the event, and hence, imply- robot; the banal has turned sour in his ing that hers and Robbie’s phenomenological mouth. positions are dissimilar. For Mrs Weston, Whilst George Weston is content with his whilst Robbie was “a novelty [...] a fashiona- material conditions, and positively fixates ble thing to do” (146) when he was initially upon his quotidian routine, it is Robbie him- bought, the thought that her neighbours self who harbours dreams beyond the mun- might disapprove of her daughter’s close dane, and is capable of imagining life within friendship with a robot when she has to alternative material conditions—to the extent “meet them every day” (148) is a greater de- that he has asked Gloria to read him the terminant of motive. The fashionable novelty speculative tale Cinderella “a million times” that Robbie once personified has faded, from (Asimov, 2018a: 144). Despite his request to her phenomenological perspective, and she hear Cinderella having been repeated ad subsequently convinces her husband to re- nauseam, he still evidently finds the fairytale turn the robot. inexhaustibly novel, and consequently ap- pears far more capable of imagining life be- —————————— yond his present situation than George does. haps ‘both of [them] invented the Laws’ collaboratively (1980: 287). Whereas George desires a repetitive routine
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which functions to maintain known quanti- ity to human behaviour—unlike the condi- ties, Robbie desires repetition which entails tioned rationality possessed by robots— the imagination of otherness. As this sug- Asimov’s robot stories critique the pivotal gests, the everyday activities of George and humanist principle of rationality, the funda- his wife are far more programmed and ma- mental “postulate connecting ancient Greek chinic than Robbie’s utopian striving is. culture together with [contemporary] Euro- pean culture” (Apostolopoulou, 2016: 119). The phenomenological is once more under- Thus, Asimov demonstrates scored in The Complete Robot in “Runaround” (1942). Stunningly, Mike Donovan describes that the Three Laws are his and his partner Gregory Powell’s mission whilst stationed on Mercury—using “ul- not entirely prescriptive, trawave equipment” (222) to produce a report on “the advisability of reopening the Sunside but rather, their ostensibly Mining Station” (223)—as a “purely routine job” (223). There is a huge gulf drawn here deterministic fundament between Donovan and Powell’s phenomeno- logical perspective and that of the presump- actually gives rise to many tive reader. In this same vein, the two con- sider the technological capability of their different behaviours and sophisticated insosuits to “stand a measly eighty[ºC] indefinitely” (229) utterly com- responses in practice. monplace, demonstrating that although the technological texture of their lifeworld is Humans, Asimov implies, are considerably vastly different to the reader’s, the hi-tech el- robotic in their performance of routines, yet ements which comprise it appear just as in contrast, Robbie is a person to the extent bland and unremarkable to them as those in that he can, and does, dream. Although “Rob- the reader’s own do to them. Accordingly, it is bie” is the earliest of all his robot stories, it specifically the carelessness with which Do- evidences Asimov already making patent his novan orders the robot Speedy to collect some project to problematise the ostensibly dichot- selenium which facilitates the impending ca- omous opposition between human and robot. tastrophe—‘death by slow broiling’ (223)— Roberts claims that through the different in- which the two humans barely succeed in terpretations of the Three Laws over the averting. course of his robot stories, Asimov “casts light Precisely because giving Speedy this order on the ethical dilemmas of ordinary human “was pure routine” (232) to Donovan, he only life” (2005: 199). Yet, whilst Roberts inter- makes the Second Law potential implicit in prets this overarching thread as an affirma- his order “rather weak” (233). Because the tion of the Kantian moral imperative, it is Third Law conditions robots to protect their more accurate to read it as a problematisa- own existence, and Donovan has not made tion of purported human rationality, and so, the order to collect the selenium sufficiently as a critique of humanism. Patently, the strong, Speedy fluctuates between the two Three Laws are fundamentally based on hu- competing impulses. His programming pre- man social codes, and so, by demonstrating vents him from being able to get sufficiently that there is no essential underlying rational- close to the dangerous selenium pool to re-
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cover it, so he runs perpetually in circles, ra- mundane principle. DV-5’s fingers typically ther than performing the important task. As perform autonomously of his direct command; is implied by the problematic corollary that the mining operations they are required to strength of command supersedes the hierar- complete are “routine” (Asimov, 2018a: 283), chy of the Three Laws, there is no such entity and so are completed with a high degree of as a pure routine. Although Donovan orders automaticity on behalf of the fingers. As Do- Speedy entirely routinely, the resultant near- novan and Powell eventually discover, how- disaster proves that the repetitive or mun- ever, in the event of emergencies DV-5 is dane always contains the seed of the extraor- forced to take direct control of all six fingers dinary or unique. simultaneously. This scenario, Asimov re- Similarly, in “Catch That Rabbit” (1944) veals, leaves his positronic circuitry overload- Powell and Donovan have subsequently been ed, and causes him to spend “his time twid- stationed on an asteroid, in order to supervise dling his fingers” (283) instead of working. a robotic mining team and identify a glitch in Consequently, both the resolution and the their programming which is stymieing the plot mechanic of the story is unambiguously mining operations. The robot in charge of the premised upon the absent-minded action of mining operation on Mercury—DV-5—is “a twiddling fingers, and the story’s SFnal con- half ton of metal and electricity [...] a mass of tent therefore cannot, in the final instance, be condensers, circuits, relays, and vacuum cells fully understood independently of the read- that can handle practically any psychological er’s knowledge of that banal activity. DV-5 is reaction known to humans”, and is powered just as bored as the roboticists who watch by “a few quintillions of positrons” (264-265). over him are, and so by the story’s conclusion, Although DV-5 is capable of directing six it becomes evident that its SFnal plot has en- subsidiary robots—referred to as fingers— tirely been engineered as a result of the in- and capable of managing the mining opera- terstices of their respective sensations of te- tion on the planet singlehandedly, the pair dium. refer to it by the casual name Dave, as robot- The figure of the humdrum is also evoked icists apparently “never” (Asimov, 2018a: elsewhere in the collection. Although in “Es- 264) refer to robots by their serial numbers. cape” (1945) Powell and Donovan become “the This is a symptom of their consummate ha- first men out of the solar system” (Asimov, bitualisation towards their objects of study; 2018a: 456), and so facilitate the beginnings after years working with robots they no long- of a human Galactic Empire, the story is per- er consider them technological marvels, but vaded by articles of banality. Eager to escape instead something akin to casual acquaint- “the monotony” (442) of theoretical work, the ances. This is further apparent when Do- pair unwittingly become the first passengers novan wearily remarks that nothing “ever onboard the maiden flight of the first ship goes wrong when you watch them” (271). His with a functional Hyperatomic Drive. Never- turn of phrase here evokes the idiom ‘a theless, their first concern upon realising that watched pot never boils’, and therefore im- the ship has entered space in preparation for plies that, in his subjective experience, su- the Jump is horror that they “haven’t even pervising robots is as picayune a task as boil- seen a bathroom in the place” (448). They are ing water on a hob or stove would be. initially thrilled to discover “baked beans” When the rationale behind DV-5 and his and “milk” (450) onboard, but soon begin to subsidiaries’ failure to mine their quota of ore lament the lack of nutritional variety in the is elucidated, it revolves around an equally ship’s pantry.
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Although their successful journey to a Throughout Asimov’s robot stories the co- neighbouring star “means freedom for all constitutive relationship between our species humanity” (Asimov, 2018a: 456), the monu- and technology comprises “a co-evolutionary mental achievement is further banalized by spiral in which what we ma[k]e and what we the first words Powell speaks on their return. bec[o]me” (Hayles, 1999: 164) have become Namely, he requests to be directed to “the intractably intertwined. Furthermore, since nearest shower” (457), since there were none technologies are non-neutral objects, the na- aboard. At the moment of this immensely ture of our species metamorphoses in parallel significant scientific discovery, Asimov with technological developments, as technol- demonstrates that even the most marvellous ogies “are more than bundles of internal or scientific discoveries cannot be dissociated external functions. They are materialized po- from the everyday. The pivotal breakthrough tentialities for generating new functions as in interstellar travel is evoked, not in a spec- well as modifiable strategies for integrating tacular, but rather, in a thoroughly grounded and reintegrating functions” (Roden, 2015: environ. This banalisation of the technology 162). We have reached the point where we at the very moment of its inception satirises cannot do without technologies; they are too then-contemporary depictions of hyperspace firmly embedded in our mundane lives. We technologies in the SF genre—which were al- can therefore no longer be we without they, ready becoming “a stock-in-trade” (Bowler, and hence the figure of the human can be 2017: 139) of the golden age pulps—critiquing seen to have been irreparably ruptured—as the undiscerning ubiquity with which the Asimov’s robot stories exhaustively demon- novum had already begun to be deployed by strate. authors. In this manner, Asimov derides the unbridled utopian social determinism of the “veritable torrent” (Bowler, 2017: 138) of The Positronic Man: The Birth of the space operas which began to appear in the af- Post-human Robot termath of the Second World War. Our lives, he implies, will always be underpinned by Perhaps the apex of Asimov’s project to aspects of mundanity, no matter how rarefied demonstrate the co-constitutive nature of our our technologies become. species and robots—and hence to repudiate the notion that the two categories can be un- derstood in dichotomous terms—is the novel- As is implied by the la “The Bicentennial Man” (1976), which was later reworked into the novel The Positronic problematic corollary that Man (1993) in collaboration with Robert Sil- verberg. By virtue of its extended length, it strength of command proves conducive to analyse the latter of these two versions of the text, rather than the supersedes the hierarchy more succinct version of the story in The Complete Robot, since the two are near iden- of the Three Laws, there is tical otherwise. In The Positronic Man, the robot Andrew Martin endeavours to become no such entity as a pure more and more human by degrees, until he is ‘irrefutably’ the human Andrew Martin. Yet routine. whilst Asimov ostensibly uses the term hu-
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man in this context unproblematically, much archical sociopolitical constructions, then of Andrew’s trouble in effecting the transition new forms of discrimination will emerge, arises from the indeterminacy of the distinc- such as portraying robots as the new ‘oth- tion between robot and human, and hence, it ers’” (2019: 60). becomes patent that each category can only Via the challenge which Andrew’s devel- attain any degree of verity whilst it remains opment poses to the supposedly stable cate- in dichotomous opposition to the other. gories of mind and body, the novella solicits Andrew’s indeterminacy thus draws con- an anti-Cartesian critique of the definite fig- spicuous parallels with the discourse of nu- ure of the human. Accordingly, by the end of merous humanist philosophers. As Michel the novel Andrew can be considered neither Foucault states, the ruptures which create human nor robot, having ruptured the forti- new varieties of phenomena are “always a fied boundaries of both categories. He has discontinuity specified by a number of dis- simply become post-human, by virtue of that tinct transformations, between two particular formulation’s rejection of categorical thought. positivities” (1972: 175). Likewise, as David James E. Gunn asserts that “[r]eaders read Hume asserted centuries earlier in A Treatise the robot stories incorrectly when they begin of Human Nature (1739-1740), when “we to care more about what happens to the ro- gradually follow an object in its successive bots than what happens to the people” (1996: changes, the smooth progress of the thought 53), yet Andrew disproves the binarism which makes us ascribe an identity to the succes- structures Gunn’s thought. Readers are in- sion”, yet when “we compare its situation af- terpellated to care about him precisely be- ter a considerable change the progress of the cause, having become a non-human born per- thought is broken” (1978: 220), and we see it son, he is neither a human nor a robot; he as a distinct object. Andrew’s development exceeds both categories. proves that fallacy of perception which Fou- The mundane aspects of Andrew’s life- cault and Hume describe. world, and the mundane lifeworlds of those As here, Asimov perceptibly uses his robot around him, are thoroughly implicated in the stories to draw upon Cartesian humanist realisation of Asimov’s post-humanistic objec- concerns—such as René Descartes’ seminal tive. When Andrew is manufactured as NDR- proposal that ‘I think, therefore I am’, which 113—in the text’s 2007—robots on Earth are relocated the innate essence of the human “still far from everyday sights” (Asimov & within the ontological categories of mentality Silverberg: 1993: 14), and it is markedly unu- and cognition—in order to revise them into a sual for a robot to be tasked with such a var- new post-humanistic framework of implica- ied “formal household routine” (17) as the tion. As Andrew’s surgeries progress, he gen- Martin family asks him to perform. He ac- erates an ontological quandary, precipitating cordingly begins his servitude as “an item of legal redefinitions of the terms human and household machinery” (27), and is even ini- robot on numerous occasions. This narrative tially required to store himself away after fin- thread resonates strongly with Francesca ishing his “day’s chores” (29). However, once Ferrando’s statement that thinking in plural- it is discovered that he has a prodigious tal- istic terms “is a necessary step in the final ent for woodwork, he is relieved from per- deconstruction of the human” and provides forming his established daily routine. crucial means of post-humanistic thought, By demonstrating an ability to create art since if our societies “do not address the rigid which is deemed aesthetically valuable to form of dualistic mindset that allows for hier- humans, Andrew is to be permitted to per-
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form a new daily routine which is more akin taken-for-granted minutiae of everyday life. to that of his human masters. Soon, Andrew Given his inhuman age by this point, he must wins a legal challenge to have himself de- also necessarily come to terms with seeing clared a free robot, and is told that he may generations of the Martin family “growing up “select [his] own jobs” (83) to perform in the and getting older and older and eventually Martin household—his performance of meni- dying” (144). Although he outlives them all, al labour is then substantially subject to his he does so at the cost of experiencing the re- own volition. Yet paradoxically, his overall cursive procession of life followed by death workload increases, since he makes full use of which the family displays in aggregate. his ability to stay awake indefinitely to “put Still unsatisfied with the remaining robot- in thirty-six or even forty-eight straight hours ic aspects of his corporeal existence, Andrew of” (85) labour into his woodwork at a time. designs and produces the world’s first artifi- cial combustion chambers which mimic the action of the human digestive system, and in As here, Asimov the process of doing so, makes the act of ex- cretion briefly novel, and saleable. As Alvin perceptibly uses his robot Madescu of US robots aptly observes, in his futile and misguided quest to achieve the ev- stories to draw upon er-elusive moniker ‘human’, Andrew is “going downhill” (Asimov & Silverberg: 1993: 166)— Cartesian humanist con- he succeeds only in making his supreme technological body increasingly unreliable cerns—such as René and mundane. In parallel, just as “Andrew, redesigning himself physically, must contin- Descartes’ seminal proposal ually adjust his self-image, so man, trans- forming his body with machines, must accept that ‘I think, therefore a new vision of humanity” (Warrick, 1981: 239) in the contemporary world. In his obses- I am’ [...] sion over obtaining “utterly trivial” (Asimov & Silverberg: 1993: 169) signifiers of humani- Decades later, Andrew uses the amassed ty such as fingernails, and his decisive reso- riches from these innumerable hours of la- lution to become mortal and die, Andrew bour to gain consent for his positronic brain proves both the fallibility and the unattaina- to be transferred into an android body. In this bility of the moniker ‘human’. new body, he must now work to relearn ac- tions which he was previously able to perform autonomously by “conscious effort” (137). The The Caves of Steel: Forays into the Ha- uncannily infantile process of relearning to bitual walk, turn, sit, speak and so on despite him being more than a century old is “terribly Numerous different technologies inhabit a slow, agonisingly slow” (138), and hence the similarly mundane positionality within the aftermath of the transfer of his consciousness sixth millennium setting of the first novel of is at first a chore rather than an emancipa- Asimov’s robot tetralogy, The Caves of Steel tion. In order to become more human, An- (1954)—which is set almost exclusively with- drew must first become defamiliarised to the in the eponymous underground cities evoked
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poetically by its title. Richard L. McKinney on the expressway in the rush hour, not just argues that there is an intractable otherness from ten to four” and moving higher “up on to the novel’s subterranean New York, given the list-of-choice at the Section kitchens” (10). that the “greatly increased population density His society, it is apparent, maintains social of the city has led to major changes in how order by interpellating its citizens to aspire to people live, the manner in which they inter- achieve fractional improvements to their quo- act, even in the ways they move about” (2011: tidian lives. 69). This observation falls far from the mark, As Baley muses, “What a trifling addition however, even when aided by McKinney’s to the convenience of the apartment an acti- subsequent qualification that despite these vated washbasin was when for thirty years purportedly immense changes, “[n]ew norms previously the trip to Personal had been an and customs have developed” (69) around automatic and unregarded one” (109). Never- these alterations to the lifeworlds of the theless, if he were to be demoted, he strongly City’s citizens. Specifically, McKinney entire- suspects he could not give up the washbasin ly neglects to emphasise the habitual nature without experiencing severe psychological of these new norms and customs to the resi- trauma. As this implies, due to the tightly- dents of the novel’s New York. Furthermore, woven social fabric of City life, behaviour is these purportedly “major changes” are in no strictly policed, the everyday character of life instance so major that the reader is unable to is protracted, and the gravity borne by the draw from them cognitively engaging paral- habitual aspects of life is greatly magnified. lels to their own quotidian life. The vicarious- Accordingly, adverse changes to the smooth imaginative “place of alterity” (68) which operation of an individual’s lifeworld become McKinney claims the novel communicates to categorically pernicious, and there is next to its reader via its depiction of a New York City no chance that individuals will risk ostracisa- of the far future must therefore be seen to be tion by disobeying social conventions. a fundamental oversimplification of Asimov’s For this reason, Baley is categorically cer- objective in his rendering of its thoroughly tain that an Earthman could not have com- habitual mise-en-scène. mitted the murder he is investigating by On the novel’s Earth, robots have become walking “cross country” (Asimov, 2018b: 62) banal enough articles of technology— from New York to reach Spacetown. When his although they remain largely outlawed in robotic partner R. Daneel Olivaw suggests public—to be referred to merely as “R’s” that the murder was committed in this man- (Asimov, 2018b: 10). As a Plainclothesman, ner, Baley exclaims, “Impossible! There isn’t Lije Baley is grateful to be able to work in a man in the City who would do it” (63). The “the nonclerical levels” (44) of the New York notion of walking cross country is so far out- police force, after having been exposed to the side of the boundaries of the cognitive pa- routine mundanity of menial labour as a rameters he uses to negotiate everyday life clerk for years. Baley’s motivation to solve that he cannot conceive the prospect of a fel- the murder case he is presented with in The low citizen having thought of it. His quotidi- Caves of Steel therefore results from his fear an life conditions his thought processes, and of being declassified, replaced by a robot, and this he assumes, would have been the case for forced to return to “the labor pool” (10). Like- the murderer too. He is proven correct— wise, as his New York is fiercely stratified by despite the fact that the exits to the city “are social class, he is acutely aware that gaining unguarded” (65) and entirely unmonitored, it a promotion would entail him getting a “seat transpires that the murderer was much more
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prepared to fire a gun at a humanoid than he with obtaining biological signifiers of the hu- was to walk cross country. man, the societies of The Caves of Steel ac- The ideology of the political sect known as tively obscure the performance of human bio- Medievalists—and by extension, the impetus logical functions under a menagerie of for the murder which precipitates the novel’s sensory phenomena. The routinised banality plot—centres around the assumption that “It of the section kitchens is one, but by no was simpler once. Everything was simpler” means the only, pertinent example of the (18). Hence, the murder central to Asimov’s novel’s saturation with mundane compo- novel has been engendered by a political fac- nents. tion whose prime motive is nothing less than making their everyday lives more straight- forward. Given the unsavoury depiction of On the novel’s Earth, Section kitchens in the novel, the Medieval- ists’ fervour is certainly comprehensible. Ba- robots have become banal ley reflects that in the kitchens, you “have your own seat which you occupy all the time. enough articles of You’re with your family, your friends. Espe- cially when you’re young, mealtimes are the technology—although they bright spot of the day” (134). Aside from those of sufficiently high social status to have remain largely outlawed in gained “private eating privileges” (51)—in which case, they can eat the same limited public—to be referred to menu in the comfort of their own apartment up to ‘three times a week’ (49)—all citizens merely as “R’s”. are expected to eat prescribed foodstuffs in the section kitchens at predetermined times, In order to travel around New York, Baley and must therefore undergo the rigidity of uses strips “with the ease of a lifetime’s prac- the mealtime routine in order to eat. tice” (Asimov, 2018b: 14)—he is so habitual- Furthermore, as the archetype of the Sec- ised towards this SFnal means of transport tion kitchens functions to entirely omit gusta- that he does not “time his steps consciously. tory considerations, the diners’ surroundings If he had, he would probably have missed” seem to have more substance than the food (21) the junction. He is able to ride the strips itself. Accordingly, the activity of nourish- automatically, since a spatio-sensory under- ment becomes reducible to the phenomena of standing has been conditioned into his “cere- “that particular odor [...] the waiting triple bral plasticity” (Hayles, 2010: 129) through line [...] the rumble of humanity [...] the the rote repetition of his usual routes. N. sharper clatter of plastic [...] the gleam of Katherine Hayles uses the term cerebral simulated wood [...] highlights on glass, long plasticity to refer to technological/cognitive tables, the touch of steam in the air” (131). As learning processes in order to emphasise that the pervasive impression of synaesthesia ap- the human brain is—in this sense— parent in Baley’s narration demonstrates, all analogous to a computer whose memory can his senses but his gustatory sense are stimu- literally be programmed and reprogrammed. lated by mealtimes, and the act of eating is Likewise, for Patrouch Jr., “it is difficult to therefore comparatively dissatisfying. believe that we need those extra three thou- Whereas Andrew Martin became obsessed sand years to get to the caves of steel. They’re
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here already” (1978: 161). As this confirms, Personals, in accordance with a “strong cus- the cityscape setting of this diegetic New tom” (45) which is naturalised in his own York barely appeared defamiliarising to mind by the enormous cognitive weight of Western readers, even at the point in time everyday reiteration. Asimov here evokes when the novel was published. what David Andrew Griffiths refers to as the Patricia Kerslake, meanwhile, asserts that urinal choreographies of the contemporary in The Caves of Steel Asimov “posits a mun- Western lifeworld. As Griffiths implies, “the dane Earth, with the average and the com- anxieties that exist in the strangely private- monplace taking a greater role than the rare public space of the public toilet” (2020: 150) and the unusual” (2007: 123). Regarding its are symptomatic of far broader anxieties characters, Kerslake asserts that the “pre- around the speciousness of the periphery be- dictable ordinariness of their lives is interwo- tween the public and the private aspects of ven with staggeringly extraordinary details, life in paternalistic societies. such as the pedestrianised ‘strips’ that every- In the Personals, Baley once more benefits one takes as a matter of course” (123). Yet, from his C-5 rating, since he is granted “a since the technology which facilitates the small projector” (47) upon which he can catch strips is utterly commonplace from Baley’s up on the news whilst showering, shitting, phenomenological perspective, its novelty is and banally, activating another machine barely explicated to the reader. Importantly, which does his laundry for him. Whereas the as David Samuelson states, “we are mainly regular Personals are “Spartan” (47)—and of- limited to the consciousness of [Baley]” (1975: fer no diversion from the biological functions 155) by means of “the thoughts with which performed within them—highly-rated citizens [he] combats his boredom” (131), aside from are amply rewarded for their adherence to small interruptions and clarifications by a social strictures in the form of private stalls third-person narrator. Thus, the novel exhib- which enact an exotic amplification of their its “a definite focus on the action, not a dif- mundane lifeworlds. As most City-dwellers fuse panorama of an unfamiliar world” (155), presumably are, Baley is a de facto connois- and the reader typically only gains compre- seur of Personals. Humorously, he is far more hension of its SFnal environ through the interested in toilets than he is in the SFnal proxy of Baley’s habitualised perspective. nova which surround him. When he is ex- It is thus precisely Baley’s habitualisation posed to the procedures for entering to his lifeworld which distils the novelty of Spacetown, for instance, he is more engaged the novel, and as it were, the novelty of the in observing that their Personal “was small, novel’s nova. Its representation of the phe- but it was well appointed and antiseptic in its nomenological lifeworld is patently a funda- cleanliness” (84) than he is stimulated by the mental aspect of the text’s rhetorical strate- prospect of entering a Spacer society for the gy—the means by which The Caves of Steel first time. generates cognisance of its SFnal aspects, Likewise, it is via a thoroughly mundane and thus gestures towards its SFnal aspects. object that the novel’s SFnal plot is both pre- Furthermore, perhaps no facet of Baley’s cipitated and solved by Baley. Although Asi- lifeworld is delineated in greater detail with- mov makes mention of Julius Enderby’s spec- in the novel than the City’s Personals, or tacles on at least a dozen occasions communal bathrooms, are. Baley takes great throughout the novel, they seem nothing care to instruct Daneel that he must not more than a device of characterisation to the speak “a word, not a glance” (46) whilst in the reader until Baley reveals them to be the de-
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finitive clue which proves that the Commis- blend of organic and prosthetic elements sioner perpetrated the murder in Spacetown. which already comprise the bodily apparat- Patrouch Jr. opines that since the “major clue uses of many contemporary humans. Just as in the story is a mid-twentieth-century clue, Enderby’s spectacles have been hidden in not a clue of the future” (165), The Caves of plain sight throughout The Caves of Steel, the Steel has become dated. Nevertheless, the solutions to the central mysteries of the two unremarkable nature of Enderby’s spectacles subsequent robot novels are also hidden in is manifestly a calculated aspect of the novel. plain sight from both Baley and readers. As It is precisely because Baley is so habitual- with Enderby’s spectacles, the unseen mun- ised to seeing them upon Enderby’s face that dane components of The Naked Sun facilitate he dismisses Daneel’s far earlier interest in the reader’s cognitive grounding apropos its that “queer” (150) aspect of the commission- intensely novel robots. er’s apparel. He therefore misses a crucial opportunity to solve the mystery early, since he cannot comprehend that Enderby’s specta- The Naked Sun: New Worlds, New Rou- cles have anything other than an aesthetic tines function. Although Baley desires only to “take up a natural existence again” and “sleep” (Asimov, Patricia Kerslake, 2018b: 256) following the extraordinary events of The Caves of Steel, his yearning is meanwhile, asserts that in entirely thwarted. In The Naked Sun (1957), he is assigned to work with Daneel “once The Caves of Steel Asimov more” (18) to solve a murder committed on the planet Solaria, of the artist Gladia “posits a mundane Earth, Delmarre’s husband, Rikaine. In order to reach Solaria, he must travel far outside of with the average and the the solar system, and this transit is achieved via a series of interstellar Jumps. In the first commonplace taking a instance, he experiences “a queer momentary sensation of being turned inside out”, but this greater role than the rare feeling only lasts “an instant” (14). Although Asimov capitalises the word Jump, and thus and the unusual” implies that the interstellar technology re- mains a novum, its momentary significance Whereas Patrouch Jr. chastises their piv- here—particularly when contrasted with the otal role in the novel’s resolution, Enderby’s momentous narrative emphasis on an earlier spectacles precisely emblematise the post- form of the same technology in “Escape”— humanistic rhetorical strategy of Asimov’s proves it to be a novum which has decayed in SF; the reader is shown a reflection of their imaginative potency in Asimov’s robot stories, own quotidian lifeworld, which allows them to the extent that it is practically a datum, to cognitively extrapolate the text’s nova from and so is elided thereafter. The multiple sub- that familiar basis. Furthermore, the central- sequent Jumps which Baley’s ship under- ity of Enderby’s spectacles to the schema of takes are narrated within the remit of a sin- the novel can be seen as synecdochic of the gle sentence.
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Similarly, although Baley soon becomes ly transcends the Earth/Spacer dichotomy, the only living human on Earth to have “ever but also invokes the realisation that novel- as much [as] set foot on an Outer World” ty—like mundanity—is both phenomenologi- (Asimov, 2018c: 9), the novelty of his unique cal and contextual. position quickly wears off. He is soon accli- On Solaria, there are “two hundred million matised enough to existence on Solaria to be working positronic robots, [...] ten thousand frustrated that the frequent travel between robots per human” (Asimov, 2018c: 26), and it Solarian time zones which his investigation is precisely this proliferation of robots which necessitates is causing him to miss out on has engendered the radical transformation of “regular meals [and] regular sleep” (168). The Solarian humans’ everyday lifeworlds. Al- Naked Sun also extends the robot novels’ most unconditional proportions of robot la- running motif of Baley’s immense knowledge bour allow Solarians to remain “widely scat- of Personals. Before he leaves for Solaria, he tered” (38) across the planet, and each notes with a sense of exotic admiration that individual subsequently lives on an enormous the Personal he visits in Washington “was estate all of their own. Having lived his life not unduly crowded [...] The stall assigned to until this point exclusively inside the caves of him was in decent order with a laundrette steel, it is profoundly perplexing to Baley that that worked well” (4). Although Baley is glee- Solarians not only have dwellings which are ful following his experience in this Personal, easily large enough for them to be able to the reader understands that he not only had “devote a single room to a single purpose” to provide identification to enter, but once in- (34), but live lives in which they never physi- side, had to carry out his ablutions within the cally come into contact with one other. In- scope of a “water ration” (5). stead, Solarians only ever contact “one an- Once on Solaria however, he undergoes other freely” (47) via trimensional imaging “the unnerving experience of taking a shower technologies, a social mandate which they re- in a stall that actually adjoined the bedroom” fer to in casual parlance as “viewing” (56). (42), an incident which gestures towards the Whilst seeing is outlawed by social custom at newly transformed context of his mundane all times—other than for procreation— lifeworld on the Outer World planet more viewing is so commonplace an occurrence broadly. Although he finds the Solarian Per- that it is totally unremarkable from Gladia’s sonal to be “the height of luxury in a way” perspective for her to view Baley whilst she is (42), its alien configuration sits so far outside wearing no “articles of clothing” (55) whatso- of his sphere of reference in respect of Per- ever. sonals that he is forced to re-evaluate his pri- Asimov palpably remodels humanist mod- or appraisals of toilets in that new context. els—such as the Cartesian cogito—which po- As when he witnesses a novel method of sition the human as a social subject in The shaving—in which an unspecified instrument Naked Sun, where humans have instead be- gives out a “fine spray of particles that swept come antisocial subjects. This move not only over cheek and chin, biting off the hair neatly deconstructs the category ‘human’, but also il- and then disintegrating into impalpable dust” lustrates the extent to which new human so- (100)—Baley’s gradual comprehension of the ciocultural norms constantly develop Solarian alternatives to his own everyday throughout Asimov’s robot stories, in an in- lifestyle practices begins to encourage him to variable process of recombination and meta- cultivate a pluralistic perspective of human morphosis. As a result of these social devel- existence. This pluralistic perspective not on- opments, the Solarian lifeworld is profoundly
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different from the crowded streets of Earth conditioning as the Solarian antipathy to- which Baley is acclimatised to. Although So- wards seeing is—he makes the pivotal deduc- larian robots are ubiquitous and unobtrusive tion in the murder investigation, the solution enough to be merely a background noise “bursting like an inner shout” (211) into the amidst the clamour of human activity on the newly expanded cognitive territory of his planet, their unremitting governance of the mind. By virtue of his newly acquired plural- lives of their masters behind the scenes is ab- istic perspective, he is able to solve the same solutely imperative to the shape of the hu- murder case which Solarian and Terrestrial man everyday lifeworld. Gradually, Baley perspectives alone had proven incapable of gains a pluralistic understanding via his al- fathoming. Yet although the conclusion of the tered lifeworld on Solaria that is characteris- investigation is approaching, he finds that tically post-human, and begins to become the “comfort and familiarity and dearness of cognisant of the extent to which the everyday home” has been perverted, and that there is routines and lifeworlds of other humans are “an estrangement between himself and the distinct from his own. Cities” (213) which keeps him from being ea- Baley therefore correctly infers that he ger to return to his wife and son.2 Having cannot carry out the murder investigation on gained a pluralistic perspective of human life, Solaria which he has been asked to carry out Baley no longer feels any one planet to be his in the same manner that he would on Earth, home, and subsequently becomes preoccupied namely by asking an array of people “a mil- with transforming the societies of Earth in lion different routine questions” (Asimov, order to emancipate them from their impris- 2018c: 58). Instead, he elects to view six onment within the stultifyingly subterranean “piece[s] of fiction dealing with everyday life cognitive horizons that are conditioned by life on contemporary Solaria” (97) as an equally within the steel caves. mundane means of investigation. As this de- cision suggests, Baley understands that the basis upon which he will be able to solve the On Solaria, there are “two murder is inextricably grounded within the Solarian everyday sphere. In his own words, hundred million working he “must understand how Solarians feel about ordinary matters” (117) in order to be positronic robots, [...] ten able to comprehend that extraordinary rup- ture of the impregnability of the everyday thousand robots per sphere which facilitated the murder he is in- vestigating. After immersing himself in So- human” [...] larian culture, he soon finds that he has be- come acclimatised enough to their planet and At the conclusion of The Naked Sun, Baley ways of life to find “himself not minding a explicitly comes out in support of “open[ing] plane flight through open space” (184), de- the gates of salvation” (Asimov, 2018c: 238) spite him having been intensely agoraphobic —————————— at the outset of the novel. 2 Baley’s sense of alienation from his wife and son likely Soon after—by virtue of his cathartic real- also results from his increasing infatuation with Gladia; isation that the “[d]arkness and crowds” he is sleeping in her house during this scene. Symbolical- (Asimov, 2018c: 210) of his home planet are ly, the beginning of their affair literalises a shift in Ba- ley’s cognitive horizons beyond those delimited by his just as much an arbitrary means of social former life on Earth.
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for Earth via a characteristically pluralistic of that robot. The background noise of robots project which will allow the planet’s popula- proves to have been a vital component of the tion to achieve everyday relations in excess of melody of the novel all along. the unremitting “noise and crowds and more noise and people and people and people” (242) to which they have known no alternative. The Robots of Dawn: Robots Hidden in Nevertheless, Gunn’s conclusion that “finally Plain Sight [...] The Naked Sun is about Elijah Baley and his battle against agoraphobia” (1996: 111) is At the outset of The Robots of Dawn— problematically anthropocentric. Although published in 1983, 26 years after The Naked the novel indubitably comprises a rumination Sun— Baley is once more tasked with a mur- on cultural difference, that specific aspect of der investigation—into the deactivation of its ontological scope is constructed through Gladia’s robotic so-called ‘husband’ R. Jander and set against the othered figure of the robot Panell—and this time, must travel to her by Asimov’s concurrent emphasis within the home planet, Aurora, to pursue the case. novel upon the colossal extent to which robots Donald Palumbo observes that each of Asi- supplement and transform the mundane mov’s robot novels follows a remarkably simi- lifeworld of humans. It is thus far more accu- lar murder mystery plot, within which its rate to state that Asimov’s rendering of principal protagonists “must race against adaptability in the novel is mediated by the time to solve an apparently insoluble mystery acknowledgement that humans are engaged [...] are victims of frame-ups or assassination in a co-evolutionary spiral with robots, and attempts while pursuing the case [and final- vice versa. ly] always snatch victory from the jaws of de- Baley becomes a direct witness to three at- feat at the last possible moment” (2002: 95). tempts at murder throughout the novel, all of Palumbo, however, neglects to note that which—in addition to the murder that he is this recursive schema also coheres into a initially tasked with investigating—are facili- thoroughgoing satire on the humanist notion tated by robots at the behest of humans. of individual agency. By casting Baley, or his When Gruer is almost fatally poisoned by a proxies, into situations where they must re- “glass of liquid” (78) handed to him by a peat the analogous sequences of events which household robot, he is almost killed by the comprise the schema of each novel, Asimov subtle manipulation of two separate back- ensures that even at the moment of logical ground aspects of the scene—the water and triumph on behalf of Baley, he merely repeats the robot. Indeed, in the original murder and that same stale victory which he has won be- the two subsequent attempts, the human fore. This trope contributes significantly to perpetrators utilise the assumption that ro- the post-humanistic schema of the robot nov- bots are nothing more than background noise els. Whereas humanist traditions have privi- to occlude the impending danger from the leged rationality as “the primordial corre- perception of humans, and so succeed in sponding order of the human and the world” weaponising the mundane. Finally, when So- (Apostolopoulou, 2016: 121), at the very apex laria’s eminent roboticist Dr Leebig confirms of each robot novel, the notion of human ra- that “Delmarre’s robot had detachable limbs” tionality is subtly undermined by the recur- (229), the murder of Rikaine is revealed to sivity of events. Therefore, the overarching have been made possible as a direct result of schema of Asimov’s robot novels radically his utter habitualisation towards the novelty problematises the notion that Baley possesses
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any semblance of agency, or rationality. Like main robotic character in the novel, Giskard, a robot, he is bound to laws—the laws of the on an “up-helix” (291). Although this moving rigid narrative schema of the robot novels.3 staircase can save its passenger time, “one When Baley once again boards a spaceship must wait for the unwinding” (292) procedure at the beginning of The Robots of Dawn, he to complete if they approach it at an inoppor- knows “exactly what to expect” (Asimov, tune moment, and it may prove quicker for 2018d: 26). The novelty of the interstellar them to take the stairs in such an instance. Jump has been replaced by familiarity for Fastolfe also showcases a “spicer” (75) to Ba- him phenomenologically, and he laments the ley, which must be manipulated in a complex listlessness caused by “the useless time cross- and ornate sequence of motions in order to ing space” (29). He is able to “ignor[e]” the in- produce “a fine sprinkling of salt” (81). terstellar Jump itself, “as though it had been a tiny hiccup inside himself” (48), since he has become acclimatised to it. The Jump has It is thus far more accurate acutely decayed as a novum, not only from Baley’s perspective, but also from the cogni- to state that Asimov’s tive perspective of the presumed reader, and its SFnal fundament is therefore enough of a rendering of adaptability in datum to be implied rather than directly evoked in the text’s narrative. the novel is mediated by Other ostensible nova within The Robots of Dawn are adequately banal to begin with. the acknowledgement that Whilst en-route to Aurora, Baley uses a “pseudo-gravity” (Asimov, 2018d: 44) bed, a humans are engaged in a rarified technology which recreates Terres- trian gravity in order to preserve its user’s co-evolutionary spiral with comfort whilst they sleep. His host, Dr. Fas- tolfe, owns something he calls a “car” which is robots, and vice versa. driven by a built in robot, and which, he hap- pens to casually mention, “is an airfoil, actu- In each instance, these nova produce so ally” (69). Also on Aurora, Baley is woken one little impact on the narrative of the text as to morning by “a faint and unrecognizable odour be nothing more than SFnal window dress- in the air”, which transpires to be a com- ing. Each comprises a pedestrian application pound named antisomnin which “activates of a magnificent technology, and therefore the arousal system” of humans (177). Daneel functions only to underscore the decadence of has elected to wake him up early since he Auroran life. Accordingly, the patrician char- feels that Baley “might want an early start” acter of the Auroran everyday lifeworld is (181), and had decided that the drug was the characteristically alien to Baley at first. Sex most efficient way to wake his master. Upon in particular has become a particularly hum- entering the Auroran Administration Build- drum affair, and as Baley characterises the ing, Baley rides with Daneel and the other situation with only a hint of hyperbole, “offer- ing sex is about on a par with commenting —————————— upon the weather” (160). Social sex, as it has 3 In addition, as Asimov himself states, “I make no se- become known, is regularly offered by one cret of the fact that in my mysteries I use Agatha Chris- tie as my model” (1994: 375). Auroran to another, and offers are typically
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accepted. As a result, many Aurorans find the preoccupation is demonstrably symptomatic act utterly banal and predictable. Dr Vasilia, of his pluralistic objective. Falstolfe’s estranged daughter, for instance, By coming to understand how that most prefers not to subject herself “to some unin- banal, public, and yet nevertheless furtive teresting event that will merely waste [her] aspect of any given human culture is coded time” (216), and chooses to abstain, she sociologically, he can learn important facts claims, out of boredom. about those that do the shitting. Fastolfe’s Another prominent Auroran, Gremionis private Personal is particularly revealing of meanwhile, has “always dreamed” (Asimov, its client’s mentality. Specially designed to 2018d: 263) of entering into a monogamous project a naturalistic and personalised simu- relationship—a supreme novelty in his socie- lation which entirely hides the room itself ty. Contrastingly, the use of robots as sex from view, it gestures towards Fastolfe’s mis- toys is entirely normalised, as Aurorans hold employed opulence, his individualistic that “it’s just masturbation” (272) by means tendencies, and his hubris. Baley finds it of an expensive sex toy. Nevertheless, after “foolish” (101), and is almost unable to uri- Gladia has had vanilla sex with Baley she nate in his state of confusion at its bizarre hears him unconsciously mutter the key arti- and highly novel setup. Vasilia meanwhile, cle of evidence in his sleep, with which he can reveals her obstinacy and guarded nature by solve the latest murder investigation. Specifi- refusing to let Baley use her personal, and di- cally, this information is revealed as Gladia recting him to instead use the “Community watches Baley “snore” (374) in a distinctly Personals” (234). When Fastolfe’s rival, unerotic manner, grounding the scene’s over- Amadiro, disingenuously offers Baley the use tones of erotic transgression within a sub- of his Personal, it becomes apparent to Baley, stratum of bourgeois domesticity. Therefore, Daneel and Giskard that his pleasant de- whilst the decadent character of social sex is meanour is a ploy to either distract them, or emphasised in The Robots of Dawn, it is to covertly gain information from them. It is pointedly the comparably simple act of shar- this act which confirms that Amadiro’s ac- ing a bed together after sex which reveals the tions are villainous in Baley’s mind, and solution to its SFnal intrigue. leads him to firmly (though wrongly) suspect Whilst this article has amply demonstrat- that Amadiro was Jander’s murderer. ed that Asimov’s rhetorical emphasis on the If Personals and sex are banal phenomena consequence of Personals was also explicit in on Aurora, the same is true to an even great- the two preceding robot novels, Hassler is er extent of robots. In this latter instance, right to observe that it “is remarkable how however, Asimov makes it apparent that the much the characters go in and out of toilets treatment of robots as picayune objects is un- in” The Robots of Dawn (1991: 107). Even be- reasonable. Although Daneel makes it appar- fore Baley reaches Aurora, he has made cer- ent that he “can go through the motions of tain to reconnoitre the Personal onboard the eating” (Asimov, 2018d: 38) if it pleases his spaceship—which, he notes, does not contain master, he does not in any physiological the “huge banks of urinals, excretory seats, sense need to do so. Although Daneel is capa- washbasins, and showers” (46) that the com- ble of completing quotidian human actions in munal Personals back on Earth do. Baley has a performative manner, in the act of doing so an almost scatological fixation with detailing he implicitly proves the inferiority of his mas- and making comparisons between the fea- ters, who are intractably necessitated to per- tures of the Personals he visits, and yet, this form such routines that he can entirely do
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without—such vital signifiers of human iden- stored in wall niches, the immensely complex tity are utterly surplus to robots. Likewise, positronic brain of any robot is capable of although Baley notices that Gladia pays “no many superhuman feats, including the vastly particular attention” to her seventy-seven expedited thought processes which save Ba- household robots, it is only because they are ley from injury. so efficient at performing the mundane activ- It is therefore profoundly cathartic that ities around her establishment, and even the novel’s resolution is brought about by the moving out of her line of sight as she ap- profound defamiliarization of one particular proaches, that she does not have to give them robot. Both robots and viewing have by this a second thought, and usually only ever sees point in the robot novels been rendered de- them “out of the corner of the eye” (126). The cidedly banal to readers via overexposure, intense love she had for Jander, it transpires, and appear to have become little more than was out of all proportion to her usual habitu- arbitrary plot devices as a result. Yet, as it alised attitude to her robotic retinue. transpires, Giskard can read and influence minds, and has been ensuring that Baley’s interactions on Aurora have all been benefi- [...] this article has amply cial to his master. Whilst Giskard has been micro-managing the text’s plot, the reader demonstrated that has remained as unaware as Baley of the true worth of his robotic companion. Once again, Asimov’s rhetorical Asimov demonstrates that the solution to an intractable problem was hidden in plain emphasis on the sight—but in this instance—the novel’s dé- nouement also stages a pointed criticism of consequence of Personals the habitual treatment of robots by the hu- mans of the novel. was also explicit in the two preceding robot novels. Conclusion
Baley himself soon notices that he is be- As this article has demonstrated, the charac- coming just as habitualised to the presence of teristic focus within Asimov scholarship ex- an obsequious robotic retinue who “flutter clusively upon the technological aspects of his about him unseen” with the result that robot stories and novels has meant that the “chores appear to do themselves” (131). Alt- importance of their mundane components hough at one point he does not know exactly have been systematically overlooked. By where Daneel and Giskard are, he feels con- shifting critical focus to the mundane aspects tented in the knowledge that, “presumably, of these works, it becomes newly apparent they were guarding the house” (161). At a that Asimov uses a mundane foundation to later point, when Gremionis lunges to attack problematise humanistic constructs of the Baley, the plainclothesman is instantaneous- human. These mundane components com- ly protected by three robots, despite him hav- prise an essential cognitive foundation of ing forgotten that “they were in the room” known phenomena, via which the compre- (273) altogether. Although they may seem or- hension of Asimov’s profoundly novel robots namental—even articles of furniture—when becomes plausible contextually. By readily
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anticipating and demonstrating the phenom- https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2018/2/6/16 enological impact of the everyday positionali- 980538/spacex-falcon-heavy-isaac- ty of technology in the contemporary world, asimovs-foundation-series (Access 20 No- Asimov’s robot stories and novels recode the vember 2020). outdated signifier of the ‘human’ in a post- GRIFFITHS, David Andrew (2020). “Hypo- humanistic paradigm. spadias and the Performative, Psychologi- cal, and Perfect Penis,” Bodie A. Ashton, Amy Bonsall and Jonathan Hay (eds.), Works Cited Talking Bodies, Vol. II: Bodily Languages, Selfhood and Transgression. London: Pal- APOSTOLOPOULOU, Georgia (2016). “From An- grave, 143-166. cient Greek Logos to European Rationali- GUNN, James E. (1996). Isaac Asimov: The ty,” Wisdom, 7.2: 118-130. Foundations of Science Fiction. Lanham: ASIMOV, Isaac (1994). I. Asimov: A Memoir. Scarecrow Press. New York (NY): Doubleday. HASSLER, Donald M. (1991). Isaac Asimov. ASIMOV, Isaac (1980). In Memory Yet Green: Cabin John, MD: Wildside Press. The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920- HAYLES, N. Katherine (1999). How We Be- 1954. New York, NY: Avon Books. came Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cy- ASIMOV, Isaac & Robert Silverberg (1993). bernetics, Literature, and Informatics. The Positronic Man. London: Pan Macmil- Chicago (IL): The University of Chicago lan. Press. ASIMOV, Isaac (1982, 2018a). The Complete HAYLES, N. Katherine (2010). Electronic Lit- Robot. London: HarperCollins. erature: New Horizons for the Literary. ASIMOV, Isaac (1954, 2018b). The Caves of Notre Dame (IN): University of Notre Steel. London: HarperCollins. Dame Press. ASIMOV, Isaac (1957, 2018c). The Naked Sun. HOBDEN, Fiona (2009). “History Meets Fic- London: HarperCollins. tion in Doctor Who, ‘The Fires of Pompeii’: ASIMOV, Isaac (1983, 2018d). The Robots of A BBC Reception of Ancient Rome on Dawn. London: HarperCollins. Screen and Online,” Greece & Rome, 56.2: AUGER, Emily E. (2009). “Robots and Repre- 147-163. sentation in Asimov’s Detective-Science HUME, David (1740, 1978). A Treatise of Hu- Fiction Novels,” Foundation, 107: 21-38. man Nature, P. H. Nidditch (ed.). Oxford: BOWLER, Peter J. (2017). A History of the Fu- Clarendon Press. ture: Prophets of Progress from H. G. Wells KERSLAKE, Patricia (2007). Science Fiction to Isaac Asimov. Cambridge: Cambridge and Empire. Liverpool: Liverpool Univer- University Press. sity Press. FERRANDO, Francesca (2019). Philosophical MCKINNEY, Richard L. (2011). “Places of Al- Posthumanism. London: Bloomsbury. terity in Science Fiction,” Gary Westfahl, FOUCAULT, Michel (1972). The Archaeology of Wong Kin Yuen and Amy Kit-Sze Chan Knowledge and the Discourse on Lan- (eds.), Science Fiction and the Prediction of guage, A. M. Sheridan Smith (trans.). New the Future: Essays on Foresight and Falla- York (NY): Pantheon Books. cy. London: McFarland, 64-83. GARTENBERG, Chaim, (6 February 2018). “The PALUMBO, Donald E. (2002). Chaos Theory: Falcon Heavy test flight included a copy of Asimov’s Foundations and Robots, and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels,” The Verge. Herbert’s Dune: The Fractal Aesthetic of
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