Journal of Information and Computational Science ISSN: 1548-7741
HUMAN AND HUMANOID DETECTIVE AGENTS IN THE SELECT NOVELS OF ISAAC ASIMOV
Author1 and Author2 1 S. Akila Research Scholar Department of English Annamalai University Chidambaram
2 Dr. A. Glory Research Supervisor Assistant Professorm of English Annamalai University Chidambaram
Abstract Isaac Asimov pointed out the utopian concept of science and technology in all his science. The three novels selected for this article are The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn . The three novels are detective novels, incorporating many technological developments such as positronic robots and space travel. This paper focuses mainly on the elements of the detective fiction in the science fiction of Isaac Asimov. It also aims at analyzing how the concept of ‘crime and punishment’ in these stories is dealt with in a different way and also how elements of science fiction and futuristic technologies fit the kind of detective fiction. A short review of the investigators of three of the tales can also be included in the article. Keywords: Detective Robot, Spacer World, Future world,
Isaac Asimov pointed out the utopian concept of science and technology in all his science. The three novels selected for this article are The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn . The three novels are detective novels, incorporating many technological developments such as positronic robots and space travel. This paper focuses mainly on the elements of the detective fiction in the science fiction of Isaac Asimov. It also aims at analyzing how the concept of ‘crime and punishment’ in these stories is dealt with in a different way and also how elements of science fiction and futuristic technologies fit the kind of detective fiction. The features of the detectives are well analyzed in the present article.
The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn are detective novels by Isaac Asimov with the detectives Elijah Baley of Plainclothes and Robot Daneel Olivaw of
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Robot's partners.The three books were set three thousand years in the future in the dystopian world. Advanced positronic robots are a regular phenomenon and hyperspace flight was developed, which led to colonize 50 fairly earth-like planets known as' Spacer Worlds.' The space-waves are rich and powerful relative to the overcrowded world in which people are destroyed by the use of robots as they depend heavily on the robot to regulate the human population. Main role in all three books are the power imbalance and the lifestyle disparities between Spacers and earthmen.
The Caves of Steel is set three thousand years into the future. Men live on Earth and operate at landmines and plantations in completely enclosed underground cities(steel cellars). Another man, the Spacers, lives outside the solar system in outer space and on many other planets. It has a life span of 350 years and is free of illness. One of them, Roj Sarton, is being killed outside of New York City in a Spacer colony. Elijah Baley, a New York human detective, investigates this murder case. The Spacers demand that he should have a humanoid companion, R. Daneel Olivaw, much to Baley's disgust. Eventually Baley and Olivaw discover the killer and become friends during this investigation.
Horace Gold, the editor of Galaxy, suggested Asimov to produce a robot novel following the success of his short stories with positronic robots. Although Gold's original proposal was to write a novel on a sociological topic in an overcrowded world of robots that had taken over jobs, Asimov could successfully merge the topic into a thriller story. In his introduction to Asimov's Mysteries, he wrote that science fiction should not be regarded as part of the group of specialized literatures, but rather as a literary reaction to scientific changes.
Nevertheless, John Campbell, one of the very first editors of the Asimov’s fiction, advised him that a science fiction crime tale was a paradox, and that technological advances could be used to arbitrarily isolate investigators from their issues. Asimov suggests that even professional mystery authors may be just as cruel to readers as they can purposely withhold a hint and insert no-one's characters.
The Caves of Steel are set in a dystopian land that is overcrowded and Earth can be called a place of despair. The title refers to cities, built on earth, with metal domes and capable of supporting more than 10 million people, with capital "C" (the capital city). The earthmen are increasingly agoraphobic and are rarely exposed outside the cities.
Strict social hierarchy occurs which allocates resources depending on one's place in this hierarchy. Machines are shown to take over less sophisticated workers gradually and a great many people are resistant to robots taking away their work. The crime occurs in Spacetown, a colony of Spacers in earth just outside New York City. Robots in Spacetown are much more advanced than the ones in earth, as can be seen in the case of Daneel Olivaw himself, who can be easily mistaken for a human being, “The Caves of Steel is a sci-fi noir detective story set a thousand or so years in the future. The crux of the book is that Detective Elijah
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Baley undergoes an experiment where he is partnered with a sophisticated robot to help solve a mysterious case. In the first few pages of the book we’re met with the tension of robots taking human jobs”(daverupert n.pag.).
In the spacious world of Solaria, which differs widely from the future world, The Naked Sun is set in Solaria. There is only a 20,000 population (compared with the Earth's eight billion) and robots are ten thousand to one, which are rigidly controlled. As there are so few inhabitants, unlike Earth where the towns are closed places, most of the world is open land. The social environment is one in which humans firmly prefere to be alone (with the exception of robots) and every type of human contact (with the exception of holographic telephony) is seen as tabuous.
Because of that aversion towards other men, and because of the very wealthy way of living (thanks to his strong dependency on robots), crime in Solaria is almost unheard of; and the killing that Baley is investigating is the first murder ever in the globe. In this novel as the Solarians ' attitude towards Baley also demonstrates the power differential between the Spacers and the Earth. Baley receives some kind of recognition in Solaria just because of the presence of Daneel, who comes from Aurora.
The Robots of Dawn is set in Aurora's spacer universe, represented as the first outer planet that humans have colonized. It is also the most strong of all the realms of Spacer (politically and economically). Aurora's social environment compares significantly with that of Solaria. Contrary to Solaria, in which every kind of close contact among humans is treated as a tabus, the Aurorans adopt a highly liberal gender attitude; the term of Gladia, formerly a solarian, clearly shows the difference. Aurora does not depend so strongly on robots as Solaria, but in the science of robotics may be more advanced than Solaria (seeing that Solarians couldn't identify Daneel as robot). In this novel Baley is forced to carry out this inquiry in order to save the world from a hostile government coming into power in Aurora. This would prevent Earthmen from spreading to more outer worlds in the galaxy.
As most earth staff in the futuristic world, Elijah Baley is agoraphobic, but he is proven to be trying to overcome this weakness in The Robots of Dawn. Asimov's own personality is reflected in the agoraphobic nature of Baley, as himself was agoraphobic. He is portrayed as a smoker with pipes, like Sherlock Holmes. But he has not demonstrated a deep passion for detective activity, unlike Sherlocks Holmes or Dupin, although it does not have much influence on the quality of his labor. He conducts work solely as a hobby and is not really passionate for difficult cases.
He is hesitant to enter other realms of investigation and has to bring such situations into account. It is depicted as impatient and short-term, sometimes leading him to draw conclusions and prematurely accuse people. In The Caves of Steel, Daneel has been convicted twice and both times proved wrong. He accuses Amadiro, Gremionis and Vasilia at The Robots of Dawn,
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which leads him almost to have been forced to leave Aurora because he was slandered. Baley appears to be an efficient investigator given this weakness by making significant deductions at critical junctures.
Elijah Baley might be classed as an investigator in procedures. He is an official member of the Earth Police Force where he reports all the offences under orders of the agency. This is a obvious classification in The Caves of Steel. Baley utilizes his rights of inquiry and detention to investigate the crime. Daneel could even be graded as a prosecutions agent, since he too was given a C-5 rating by Baley on a temporary basis and is seen to use his power to evict the rioters in the town by destroying and intimidating his blaster
The concept of justice in all three books seems unique. The perpetrator is not actually punished in either of three stories; rather, they are entitled to "greater things." In The Caves of Steel, when he agrees to help the Spacers achieve their goal of colonizing time, the individual who is shown to commit the murder is not punished. The innocence can be questioned too, because he never wanted to commit murder; Daneel studied the reasoning about his inability to commit murder. His goal was to just destroy a machine, which was far less a crime than murder, but Sarton made mistakes with Daneel and killed him. Hence Daneel offers to abandon him even with his crudely engineered vision of justice, unless he consents to take advantage of his medieval power to force Spacetown's ambitions for earthmans to colonize space.
In The Naked Sun, Baley makes adamant that Gladia herself performed the killing literally and Leebig couldn't really touch any other person, even if he wanted to kill him. But even after he had proof of it, he suspected Leebig of committing the murder, and then on the Moon, he clarified, the solarians were too shocked to see Baley ''s abuse of robotics. He reveals how he abandoned her because Leebig created the reasons behind the killing, telling the robot to offer his arm to Gladia when she was furious, knowing full well that it would contribute to the killing of Delmarre, and that Gladia was simply an unspeakable weapon to destroy Gladia, just like the robot was. Baley claims he wasn't really involved in the Solar Policy, that the needs of the earth are overwhelming and that therefore it was important to stop leebig from designing robotic battleships.
The idea of criminality itself is unique in The Robots of Dawn. No human being is coming to harm, but a robot is not made functional. Even though the machine was compassionate, it was little more than harm to the system. And since the robot was part of the primary perpetrator, Fastolfe, the offense was even less because he was guilty of destroying his own estate. The real objective here was to save the reputation of Fastolfe and thereby ensure that Aurora had friendly relations with Earth to help earthmen colonize the space. Occasionally Baley tries to make a tale that he admits is fake, however he would persuade the Aurorans of the righteousness of Fastolphe. Even at the end of the day, Amadiro is trying to portray him as
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the one that damaged Jander, even if Fastolfe told Amadiro (or anyone other than Fastolfe) several times that it couldn't be committed by Amadiro.
Finally Baley does not reveal this information to the public, although he discovers that Giskard was in charge of the crime. Giskard probably found it unnecessary to expose Giskard as the true aim of a visit to Aurora has been accomplished; or as Giskard later said he was capable of doing, Giskard probably manipulated his mind so that GisKard would never find the urge to talk about the involvement of Giskard in crime although he would always remember this. Wagner comments:
But it is good entertainment, if you like mysteries in which deceptively simple acts conceal broader agendas. And in its best scenes, Asimov shows a gift for real warmth in his handling of character that would prove inspirational to a whole generation of SF writers, who would come to realize that SF could be about real people, regardless of its fantastic settings, and not just Buck Rogers pulp archetypes. Perhaps the book's themes about What Makes Us Human seem, today, to be a little obvious if not altogther hokey. But taken with an understanding of the age in which The Naked Sun was written, the cumulative effect reveals Asimov as the forward thinker, and the great humanist, he was in his day. (n.pag.)
Asimov has mixed mystery with science fiction. And the investigator and deductive computer officers all did well, showing that they are both technologically well trained and mentally incomparable.
References
Asimov, Isaac. “The Caves of Steel (The Robot Series): Paperback.”
Barnes & Noble, https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/caves-of-steel-isaac-asimov/1100270421.
Books Online Free, https://novel12.com/243237/the-robots-of-dawn.htm.
“ElijahBaley.” DeviantArt, https://www.deviantart.com/elijahbaley.
“The Caves of Steel.” Https://Daverupert.com/, 11 July 2018, https://daverupert.com/.
“The Naked Sun.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 30 Oct. 1984, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0147524/. http ://
Wagner, Thomas M. “The Caves of Steel.” Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Reviews, 1998, http://www.sff180.com/.
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