Resumo de I, Robot - Isaac Asimov

Biography
Although now an American national, Isaac Asimov was Russian by birth. He was born in the village of Petrovitch near Smolensk on January 2nd 1920. At least, that's the day he celebrates, although the exact date was never recorded. It is further confused by the period when Russia was at last phasing out the old Julian calendar and adopting the Gregorian. Perhaps it was all this that gave Isaac Asimov his fascination for dates and his delight in recording facts. The Asimovs immigrated to America in 1923. After a variety of jobs, Isaac Asimov's father established a small confectionery and newsagents remembered affectionately as the candy store. It was through this store that young Isaac Asimov, who had already become aware of the pulp magazines, and in particular the gosh-wow-wonder of the SF pulps published by Hugo Gernsback, such as Amazing Stories and later Wonder Stories. Isaac Asimov totally fell in love with science fiction and was soon trying to write it. He discovered SF fandom and became a member of the astonishing fan group known as the Futurians. This included such future writers and editors as Frederik Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth, James Blish and Daniel Wollheim, and has to be regarded as one of the most talented of all SF groups

Review of I Robot
I, Robot contains a series of tales published throughout the 1940s in various pulp magazines. The book presents them as a series of vignettes related by Dr. Susan Calvin, an elderly robopsychologist who is being interviewed in conjunction with her impending retirement from the mega-corporation US Robot and Mechanical Men, Inc. Her half-century career with the company that was founded the same year she was born (1982) has seen robots grow from relatively crude, mute household appliances to lifelike androids scarcely discernable from human beings.

I, Robot has had a lasting influence on the vocabulary of science fiction. Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics originate here, a robot may not injure a human being or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, a robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law and a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. These laws were created with the tacit assumption that robots would eventually become more intelligent and physically stronger than their human creators - and to give Asimov a way out of the by-then over-indulged them of the evil, rampaging robot. Since I, Robot's publication and on to the present day, Asimov's Three Laws have become the default position in many a story involving artificial people. A less lasting, but still notable influence is Asimov's coinage of the term positronics, a purely made-up word which describes a theoretical neural-electric technology that enables complex robot brains to be created. Positronics was further immortalized by its use in Star Trek, The Next Generation to explain android Commander Data's unique place in the cosmos.

The stories in I, Robot generally involve some clever premise in which the Three Laws are stretched to the breaking point, leaving one or more human protagonists to solve the resulting mystery. Robbie is a relatively straightforward tale in which an early model of robot is purchased as a playmate/babysitter for a little girl, whose mother, eventually objecting to her daughter being raised by a soulless machine, later trades the robot in
for a real-live dog. Robbie eventually proves his loyalty by saving the little girl from being crushed by a factory tractor. Runaround introduces us to the humorous duo of Powell and Donovan, a pair of Heckle-and-Jeckle field testers of new robot models. In Runaround the pair nearly find themselves stranded on Mercury when their new robot has trouble reconciling the Second and Third Laws. In Reason, Powell and Donovan are confronted with a robot-turned-religious-fanatic who keptical that weak, flawed humans could possible have made such a superior being as himself.

I Robot, while engaging and stimulating, does show some age - it's been 64 years, after all, since Robbie was first published. The prose is often clunky and occasionally sounds like something a condescending schoolmaster might write to appeal to his pre-teen charges (and that's not far from the truth, since Asimov was a professional scientist writing in a market that aimed straight for the foreheads of twelve-year-old boys). There's antiquated talk about machine oil and gears and sizzling circuits, and a good deal of I say, old bean sort of dialogue between Donovan and Powell.

Conclusion
Nonetheless, I Robot typifies the joy and energy and optimism that made the science fiction of the golden age so appealing. Today's adult science fiction readers (a demographic that barely existed five decades ago) are more sophisticated, or more cynical, or more apt to reach for a stack of novelized Star Trek placebos and might not appreciate early Asimov. But for younger readers, or adults who can appreciate Asimov's historical and literary context, I Robot still ranks high on the must-read list. And now fans can add it to their must-listen list, as the collection has just been released for the first time in unabridged audio.

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