The Caves Of Steel: 200 Word Reviews #30

The Caves Of Steel by Isaac Asimov is a fun read that has interesting implications during our age of AI labour displacement, but is ultimately a flawed product of its time.

In the far flung future, humanity has colonised other planets and achieved prosperity through robot labour, while on Earth they burrowed underground and formed rigidly organised mega-cities. The distrust between them threatens to bubble over when a Spacer is murdered, apparently, by an Earthman. The plot follows Terran Lije Baley and his Spacer Robot partner as they uncover the murderer and stop catastrophe.

The writing is very Asimov. Fast paced, compelling ideas, flat characters and a dated sense of what can or should be written. The only female character is overly emotional, with poorly fleshed out motivations and submits when her husband tells her to do so. The replacement of human labour with that of robots is the central social issue in the book and has parallels with current rise of LLMs. Asimov, however, embraces a stance so pro-tech that it comes off rather naïve.

Overall, I enjoyed reading The Caves of Steel and recommend it to anyone with a tolerance for the prejudices of a straight, white, dated author.

Have you read it? What did you think?