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I, Robot
Author	Isaac Asimov
Publisher	Gnome Press
Publication Date	1950
Country	United States
Genre(s)	Science Fiction
ISBN
Related	The Complete Robot

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov is a book published in 1950, consisting primarily of nine short stories which Asimov had published in magazines in the 1940’s (all but the first story were first printed in Astounding). The title, I, Robot, was chosen by the book’s publishers over Asimov’s objections, since that title had already been used for a well-known short story, written by Eando Binder, and published in the January 1939 issue of Amazing Stories.

Plot

In book form, the story traces the early history of robots, and explores the Three Laws of Robotics, namely:

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

In the book, the short stories are framed by a reporter’s interview with Susan Calvin, a robotics engineer nearing retirement in the year 2057, having completed half a century in the robot business. Born in 1982, the first story is based on something she witnessed in 1998.

"Robbie" (this story was originally written in May 1939 by a 19-year-old Asimov, but was rejected by Astounding. It was not published until the September 1940 issue of Super Science Stories, where editor Frederik Pohl changed the title to “Strange Playfellow”) -- Robbie is a mute nursemaid robot, taking care of a 6-year old girl, Gloria Weston. The story opens with them playing hide and seek, and other children’s games. However, the girl’s mother has doubts about leaving her child in the hands of a robot, and is aware of growing resentment of the humans in the town to the robot. She convinces her husband to sell the robot back to the manufacturer, breaking the little girl’s heart. They tell her that Robbie just ran away, but Gloria cannot get used to losing him. Eventually the family moves to New York, and on a trip to a museum, Gloria goes to an exhibit of a talking robot and asks him if he knows where Robbie is, damaging the talking robot somehow (Susan Calvin witnesses this exchange). Then Gloria’s father gets the idea of giving Gloria a tour of the robot factory to convince her that robots are things, and not people. But at the factory Gloria sees Robbie off in the distance and runs to him. A tractor nearly runs Gloria down, but Robbie saves her life. Mrs. Weston then agrees reluctantly to let Robbie back into their home.

In the bridge, Susan Calvin explains that soon after all governments banned robots for use on Earth, and so her company had to exploit the extraterrestrial market.

"Runaround" (1942)—Donovan and Powell are two scientists on Mercury, setting up a mine. They have sent their robot, Speedy, to get some critical selenium from a pool, but the data shows he is just running in a circle around the pool. They reactivate two of the big, primitive robots left behind by an earlier expedition, and they set out for Speedy's position. They approach Speedy, but his speech is gibberish. They conclude that Speedy has a conflict between the second and third laws—for example, something at the selenium pool is threatening Speedy's safety, but he has orders to get the selenium, so he hovers at a point where those two conflicts are just in balance. They figure there must be some volcanic activity in the selenium pool. So they try to break the impasse by increasing the 3rd law danger—they have one of their primitive robots throw a chemical into the pool, further endangering Speedy. But this only convinces Speedy to circle the pool at a greater radius. Then they take the desperate action of initiating the First law—one of the astronats walks out to Speedy’s position, in the blazing sun, and demands that Speedy come and save his life. This eventually works.

"Reason" (1941)—Powell and Donovan are assigned to an energy station—it gathers solar energy, and then sends that energy, via a focused beam, to Earth. The station used to be run by humans, but now it is run mainly by robots, with only the two human supervisors. But the US Robotics company has built a new executive robot, called QT-1, who will one day take over the station. QT-1 does not believe that humans like Donovan and Powell created him, since to him it is obvious that no inferior (biological) being can create one greater than himself (made of metal, more efficient, etc). They show him the view port, where QT-1 can see the stars, the planets, and outer space, but QT-1 says their explanation is ridiculous; that there is simply a black mass just beyond the glass, with small white dots in it. QT believes that a "master" created the station, the humans, and then the more efficient robots, to serve him. He convinces the other robots on the station of this, who make QT their spiritual leader ("There is no master but the Master, and QT-1 is his prophet.") QT-1 banishes the humans from the beam control room. This worries Powell and Donovan, because a storm is approaching, and it could deflect the energy beam, destroying a good portion of the Earth. They try to demonstrate to QT their ability to create a robot, but he points out that they assembled, not created; he thinks they know instinctively how to do that. They believe that QT is simply following his assumptions.

Eventually they realize that QT has held the beam on target all through the storm much more efficiently than they could have. QT says he was just serving the Master, but they realize that all his behavior could be explained by the first law of robotics—since the robots control the beam better than humans, it is best for the humans to let the robots handle it. Powell and Donovan are transferred off the station.

"Catch That Rabbit" (1944)—Powell and Donovan are assigned to supervise a new kind of robot mining in an asteroid field. It is headed by a robot named Dave, who has six subsidiary robots under his control, like a hand controlling fingers. The problem is that when under supervision, Dave performs well, but in too many unsupervised cases, his robots return with no ore. Powell and Donovan monitor the robots secretly, and they see that every once in a while they start marching around in a very strange way. They eventually decide that all this happens during emergencies, but they need to study more closely, so they decide to manufacture a cave in. Of course, they end up getting trapped themselves. They call to the robots for help, and the robots are in a state of frenzy. They shoot one of the robots, and all is well. Later, they explain that six robots was just too much for Dave to handle in an emergency; destroying one helped Dave to regain control.

"Liar!" (1941)—A new series of robots, the RB series, produces one major anomaly—the 34th to come off the assembly line has the ability to speak. The four engineers who know about it then begin investigating. Robopsychologist Susan Calvin, then in her late 30s, is given the task of studying RB-34. In answer to a personal question, the robot tells her that one of the other researchers, Ashe, whom she loves, is also in love with her. Susan begins acting on that information. Meanwhile, RB tells another researcher that the boss is planning to retire, allowing him to take over. Later, Ashe tells Susan that he’s engaged to another woman, and the aforementioned boss has a big argument with the underling who thought he was going to retire. The two men confront RB-34, who is unable to respond clearly. That’s when Susan figures out that the robot was acting on the 1st law -- it didn’t want to hurt the feelings of the humans. They then ask the robot what went wrong in the manufacturing process; RB34 knows, but telling the researchers would humiliate them. Not telling them would hurt them by depriving them of information they need. Susan, bitter over what RB-34 told her earlier, confronts RB-34 with this until his positronic brain overloads and he dies.

"Little Lost Robot" (1947)—In 2029, roboticists Susan Calvin and Peter Bogert are summoned to the research base Hyper Base to find a lost robot. When they arrive the situation is explained to them. Researchers on this base had to experiment regularly with dangerous radiation; they were able to limit their exposure to the radiation, but still, because of the First law of robotics, the robots nearby could not allow humans to come to harm through inaction, so they would rush in to save the humans from even non-lethal doses. So the researchers made a special request to the robotics company—they ordered twelve robots to be delivered, in secret, with a modified First Law. They could not harm humans, but they could, through inaction, allow humans to come to harm. Then one day, as a spaceship delivered a shipment of robots, one of the researchers, in an angry pique, yelled at one of the robots, cursing him up and down, and told him to go lose himself. That modified robot then stowed away on the cargo ship among 62 other robots of the same make and model. The only difference is that the one robot that's hiding has the modified First Law. Bogert knew about these modifications, but Calvin did not, and she is horrified at the thought, thinking that modifying the first law will distort the robot’s thinking process. She argues that all thinking things have a resentment of taking orders from beings they consider inferior, and this will be especially acute in the modified robot. She thinks it is even conceivable that such a robot may drop an anvil over a human's head, knowing that it could stop the anvil; but once the anvil is released, the robot may become indifferent to the safety of the human, and allow the anvil to continue dropping.

Dr. Calvin devises a test, whereby all 63 robots are placed in front of humans who get something dropped on them. Of course, in this case even the modified robot would move to save the human, since it is trying to hide, and would therefore try to act like a normal robot. So Calvin places an electrical field in front of the robot, which is strong enough to be fatal. But in the test, none of the robots move to save the humans. On questioning, they reveal that the electricity would have destroyed the robots anyway so they could not save the humans whether they tried or not.

Calvin recommends destroying all 63 robots (plus the other 11 modified robots on the station), until she comes up with another idea. She remembers that all the research robots received their training in "etheric physics"’ after arriving on the station. So she sets up a test just like her previous one, replacing the electricity with gamma rays. She informs all 63 robots that the gamma rays are fatal. This time, when the objects drop, one robot flinches. Calvin immediately singles him out. The robot, Nestor-10, actually starts to strangle Dr. Calvin, before it is stopped by her colleagues. Later, Calvin explains —she actually replaced the gamma rays with infrared rays, which are not harmful to robots. But the normal robots, who had no training in this kind of physics, could detect the radiation but could not distinguish between types of radiation, and so they did not move. The modified robot, Nestor 10, assumed that his brother robots would be smarter than that, since the modifications on his positronic brain, and subsequent events, had inflated his ego—his sense of robot superiority.

"Escape!" (1945)—A rival robotics company, Consolidated, has been working on hyperspace travel, as has US Robotics (Susan Calvin’s company), in alliance with the Hyper Base. Consolidated now sends a proposal to US Robotics—they submitted a series of formulae to their supercomputer, which promptly blew its fuses, presumably because the ship it was asked to design would be fatal to humans. Now Consolidated wants to submit the same formulae to US Robotic's supercomputer, The Brain. But US Robotic's execs see this as a ploy to destroy their computer as well. Susan Calvin comes up with a solution; she feeds the formulae into the computer a little at a time, and tells the Brain not to get too excited about the deaths of humans. That way, when the Brain rejects one section of the formulae, they’ll know where the problem is.

To everyone's surprise, the Brain actually designs the hypership. Donovan and Powell are recruited to fly the ship, but on their first inspection, they get locked in the ship, and it takes off. Looking around, they find some oddities—no furniture, the only food is beans and milk, limited plumbing facilities, a radio receiver but no transmitter, etc. A few days later the ship goes into warp, and the two men experience what seems like death. Then they come out of warp to find they are 300,000 parsecs away. Some time later they return to Earth.

Calvin explains: Consolidated's computer had a meltdown when it realized that sending humans into warp would kill them. But the Brain was told by Calvin not to worry about death, so it was able to investigate further, and find that this death would be only temporary. But still, killing them temporarily violated the first law a little bit, so the Brain compensated with a sense of humor (the beans, the radio, etc). US Robotics then sends the ship to Consolidated so they can feel the brunt of Brain's jokes as well, and everyone gets to work on fixing the bugs in hyperspace travel.

"Evidence" (1946)—In the year 2032, a man named Quinn, running for mayor, approaches Dr. Lanning of the US Robotics and Mechanical Men Company, and accuses his chief rival, Stephen Byerly, of being a robot. It seems Byerly has never been observed to eat anything in public. Lanning and Susan Calvin interview Byerly, who obliges them by eating an apple. But Calvin points out that building a human-looking robot would also require a robot that could eat in emergencies. She says the only way to be sure is with an internal examination, or by observing Byerly violate the three laws of robotics. Dr. Calvin says that her company's experiments show that a human form can be created for a robot in only two months. Quinn’s theory is that Byerly was disabled in an accident some twenty years earlier, and that after that accident he built the robot version of himself to fulfill his dreams of becoming a prosecutor and politician. (Byerly has a mysterious friend in a wheelchair that lives with him most of the time, and Quinn thinks that's the real, human Byerly.) Dr. Lanning objects that Byerly's job as prosecutor involves harming human beings, but Calvin disagrees. She points out that the prosecutor never passes sentence, and that Byerly has never recommended the death penalty. Further, a robot, in her opinion, is capable of harming one evil human if that is necessary to save other, more innocent humans.

Stephen Byerly tells Dr. Calvin that his plan is to wait until Quinn goes public with his accusation, and then to refute the charge and make Quinn look foolish. Quinn does go public, and his charge is met with first ridicule, then horror. The fundamentalists, radically opposed to robots, are the most vociferous. Quinn convinces the police to get a search warrant for Byerly’s house, but they are unable to turn up anything incriminating. During the search, they surreptiously X-ray Byerly, only to find that he is wearing a shield—which is suspicious, but not proof. Later, Byerly appears in public to make a speech, where most of audience is made up of hostile fundamentalists. One such man comes up to the stage with Byerly and demands that Byerly hit him in the chin. Byerly hesitates, and the man says that’s because he’s a "monster"—a robot—and cannot violate the First Law. But then Byerly stuns everybody by hitting the man and knocking him out cold.

That is enough to convince nearly everyone that Byerly cannot be a robot. Dr. Calvin publicly declares that he’s human, and Byerly wins the election. Before the inauguration, Calvin talks to Byerly, and says that she thinks there is another possibility—that the man Byerly hit was not human after all, but was in fact another robot created by the disabled Byerly just for the purpose of getting hit in public. Dr. Calvin has no proof, she admits, but still plans to support Byerly in his political career, since she prefers robots to human beings anyway.

In the bridge, Calvin says that Byerly had a long career in politics, obtaining high office as the world governments consolidated, and that after his death he had his body cremated, so we can never be sure if he was a robot or not, though in her opinion he was.

"The Evitable Conflict" (1950)—Stephen Byerly, an economic coordinator for the world, comes to Susan Calvin with a dilemma. The Earth has been politically and economically divided into four great regions, and the economies of each are being run by "Machines"—great supercomputers, which for many years have done a nearly perfect job. But now there are small dislocations in the economies that are appearing, and they can’t figure out why. The Machines follow the laws of robotics, and the data they are being given is well checked by both human and computer monitors. Byerly recounts visits to the economic headquarters of each of four regions, and each human coordinator remains unconcerned.

Byerly earlier pointed out that in each age of history there seemed to be inevitable conflict—over dynastic succession, or ideology, or economics, or something else. But the Machines have so streamlined the economy that perhaps they have eliminated the need for such conflict. Susan Calvin’s explanation is to first point out that those who have suffered from the Machines' inaccuracies are generally members of the Human First organizations, outgrowths of the fundamentalists, and opposed to the rule of the Machines. But since the Machines are now responsible for the good of humanity, which they see as being intricately tied up with their own continuing rule, they are manipulating the economy to reduce the power and influence of a group which might pose a threat to that rule. Essentially, the Machines are taking over in the interests of humanity. Byerly thinks that’s horrible, but Susan Calvin thinks it's magnificent.

Adaptations

In 1983, Atari released a video game based on the book.

In 1962, a short-lived British anthology series, Out of This World, adapted the story "Little Lost Robot" for television. It aired on July 7, 1962, and starred Maxine Audley as Dr. Susan Calvin.

A later British anthology series, Out of the Unknown, adapted two of these stories for television. "The Prophet" (based on the story "Reason") aired in 1967, with Beatrix Lehmann as Dr. Susan Calvin, David Healy and Brian Davies as Powell and Donovan, and Tenniel Evans as QT-1. According to IMDB, the robots for this episode were later recycled for an episode of Dr. Who. In 1969, the same anthology series adapted "Liar!" for television, with Wendy Gifford as Susan Calvin, Hamilton Dyce as Dr. Lanning, and Ian Ogilvey as RB-34.

In 1977, Harlan Ellison was asked to adapt the book for Hollywood. The subsequent screenplay, which Asimov himself thought would become "(t)he first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction movie ever made," was never filmed. Ellison published it in book form in 1995, as I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay. It includes an introduction recounting the problems he had getting the film made.

In 2004, Hollywood released a movie version, directed by Alex Proyas and starring Will Smith. Bridget Moynahan played Dr. Susan Calvin, and James Cromwell played Dr. Lanning; however the plot of the movie bears little connection to the book.