The steel caves

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Die Stahlhöhlen (original title: The Caves of Steel , title of the first German translation: The man from over there ) is a science fiction / detective novel by the American author Isaac Asimov . The book was published in 1954 and is about the murder of a prominent robotics officer, which the police officer Elijah Baley has to solve together with his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw. Although the plot of the novel is a classic Whodunit , Asimov uses elements of science fiction to shed light on the dystopia of an overpopulated earth and the opportunities and dangers of intelligent robots in it. In Asimov's life's work, the novel is a bridge book between his robot short stories, which are set in the near future, and the Foundation cycle , which is set in the distant future .

action

scenario

In the 30th century, humanity was divided into two parts. The majority of the 8 billion people live in the cities on earth. These totally overpopulated, hermetically sealed domed cities (the "steel caves") are the size of today's US states. The earth's inhabitants all suffer from agoraphobia and cannot bear to see the open sky. In space, however, live the so-called “spacers” who, with the help of hyperspace flight and intelligent robots, have colonized around 50 alien planets and created a clinically perfect, high-tech, but also sterile counterculture.

The two dominant worldviews are medievalism and modernism . Medievalists reject technical progress in general and robots in particular. You strive for a more nature-loving world and have the past as a model, when humans and nature were even closer together. The modernists see a better future only in technical progress and advocate robots. Most of the city residents are medievalists, while the spacers are mostly modernists. These opposing worldviews lead to enmity between spacers and terrestrials.

Summary

Before the start of the book, the spacer robotist Roj Sarton is shot with an energy pistol in Spacetown, the enclave of the Spacers on Earth near the domed city of New York. Police chief Julius Enderby hands the investigation over to his best man, police officer Elijah Baley. The spacers around Sarton's work colleague Han Fastolfe insist on giving him one of their humanoid, telepathic robots as a partner, R. Daneel Olivaw. This displeases Baley, who has an aversion to robots, and what makes it more difficult is the fact that Daneel has the same facial features as his builder Sarton.

In the main part of the book, R. Daneel and Baley visit various locations in Spacetown and New York, where R. Daneel offers his telepathy in the search for the killer. R. Daneel demonstrates this by analyzing Enderby's brain waves and determining that the police chief is unable to consciously kill a person. Due to the tensions between settlers and spacers, it is assumed that an act was planned in cold blood, so that R. Daneel would attract attention to a pathological murderer with such a conspicuous weapon.

But Baley initially suspects R. Daneel of actually being Roj Sarton and only faking his death until R. Daneel literally unscrews his mechanical arm. Then the policeman believes that the robot himself committed the murder of its creator, until he realizes that the android is incapable of doing this due to robotics laws . After a while, Baley changes his mind about his robot partner, and in return, R. Daneel begins to deal not only with abstract logic but also with human morality. Together they track down a mediaevalist sect that is committed to the return of mankind to nature and the renunciation of robots. Political tensions between Spacers and Earthlings rise, and Baley discovers that both his own wife, Jessie, and Enderby belong to this old-fashioned sect.

Through Daneels superhuman perception and Baley's intuitive understanding of human nature, they find out that Enderby is the culprit. On the night of the crime he smuggled the energy pistol to Spacetown and wanted to destroy R. Daneel with the energy pistol, but by accident he shot his creator Roj Sarton instead. The brain scan at the beginning of the story showed that Enderby was unable to consciously kill a person, but left out the possibility that he could accidentally kill a person . When R. Daneel and Baley forgive him anyway, Enderby collapses full of self-contempt, and declares himself ready to reform the old media as a penance and to fight for peace between the inhabitants of the earth and the spacers. In the end, there is a way out for the antagonistic ideologies and situations between earth dwellers and spacers: colonizing new worlds on which earth dwellers can dare a new beginning with robots.

Main and supporting characters

main character

  • Elijah "Lije" Baley is a detective in the New York Police Department. He has a wife and a son. He may not be a staunch mediaevalist, but he doesn't think much of robots. The murder of Roj Sarton will tower over him.
  • R. Daneel Olivaw is a humanoid, telepathic robot designed by Roj Sarton. Originally it was programmed to collect data, but it was also given legal programming. He becomes Baley's partner.

Supporting character

  • Bentley Baley is the son of Baley.
  • Vince Barrett is a young man who used to work in the police force until he was replaced by R. Sammy.
  • Francis Clousarr is a worker on a yeast farm and a member of an old-fashioned sect.
  • Julius Enderby is the chief of the New York Police Department. He is a supporter of a mediaevalist sect.
  • Han Fastolfe is a Robotronics specialist from Spacetown who was born on the planet Aurora.
  • Dr. Anthony Gerrigel is a robotics specialist from Washington.
  • Jezebel "Jessie" Navodny is Baley's wife.
  • R. Sammy is a robot who works in the New York Police Department.
  • Roj Nemennuh Sarton is a specialist in robotronics from Spacetown. He is murdered before the book begins.

background

In the foreword to the American version of this book, Asimov explains that in 1952 his publisher John W. Campbell suggested that he write a story about "robots taking control in an overpopulated world." When Asimov declined because it seemed too depressing to him, Campbell lured him into writing this as a Whodunit detective story. As a trick, a human detective should get a robot partner who would take over the task for him in an emergency. Asimov loved this idea, wrote his story, and was very happy with it.

Theories

Although the book is written like a whodunit , Asimov says , he uses the book to make several assumptions about future society. Because of overpopulation , human labor is increasingly being replaced by robots on the earthly side, which leads to social tensions. Instead of (resource-wasting) automobiles, there is a network of conveyor belts that bring citizens from A to B, and Asimov introduces yeast as a future staple food, from which meat, fruit and vegetable substitutes are made with the help of taste and texture changers . Jobs, housing, food and luxury goods such as tobacco and alcohol are strictly rationed. The settlers are organized in a caste system that allows more privileges the higher one is.

For the spacers, Asimov imagines that due to technical and medical advances as well as sterile conditions on the planets they terraform, they will be around 200 years old, but will completely lose their immunity to terrestrial germs and viruses, which is why their lives on earth are only at risk can circulate. In addition, the Spacers have developed a model of life that is very solitary.

Asimov points out in the book that neither of the two life models is viable in the long term. The earth's inhabitants would eventually starve to death or tear themselves apart in a civil war, and the spacers would perish from sheer sterility. Only when the energy of the earth's inhabitants is combined with the technology of the spacers will humanity move forward.

Also noteworthy is the depiction of the robot R. Daneel Olivaw. Asimov, who found the then prevailing Frankenstein representations of robots (i.e. as monsters who always turned against their builders and always died) as uncreative and boring, postulated the so-called robot laws , according to which robots are in its universe is impossible to hurt people or harm them by inaction. Asimov designs Olivaw as a sensitive, albeit very rationally thinking being who, unlike his human partner Baley, is also free from racism and prejudice. It is particularly interesting that Asimov lets Olivaw establish that pure logic does not always lead to justice, he therefore develops concepts of moral thinking and thus goes beyond his programming.

Classification in the Asimov complete works

Asimov's main works are the robot stories set in the near future (including the well-known self, the robot ), which deal with the effects of intelligent robots on humanity, as well as the Foundation cycle , an epic space opera around the 10th millennium Future of humanity in itself. The steel cave connects these two worlds and describes how mankind uses robots as a tool to explore space.

review

"Grippingly written, exciting stories that you don't like to put down before the end. Asimov's rather laconic style gives the descriptions a haunting plasticity that is almost irritating because it comes across as completely unpretentious. "

- Corona magazine

expenditure

  • First published as a serial novel: The Caves of Steel . In: Galaxy , 3 parts from October 1953.
  • First edition as a book: The Caves of Steel . Doubleday, 1954.
  • German first edition: The man from over there. Translated by Werner Gronwald (as Mortimer Colvin). AWA (Astron Library), 1956.
  • New translation in 1961: The man from over there . Translated by Hansheinz Werner. Heyne books # 90, Munich 1961, DNB 450151964 .
  • New translation in 1988: The Steel Caves . Translated by Heinz Zwack (as Heinz Nagel). Heyne (Library of Science Fiction Literature # 71), 1988, ISBN 3-453-02757-4 . Last as: The Steel Caves . Heyne, 2016, 978-3-453-52794-2.
  • Double volume with the novel The naked sun : The steel caves . Heyne, 1997, ISBN 3-453-12767-6

filming

The Steel Caves was made into a film by the BBC in 1964 . Peter Cushing played Elijah Baley, and John Carson played Daneel Olivaw.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Caves of Steel . Bantam Books, 1991, pp. Vi-xvi