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Robots and Empire
Author	Isaac Asimov
Publisher	Doubleday
Publication Date	1985
Country	United States
Genre(s)	Science Fiction
ISBN	ISBN 0-385-19092-1
Related	Robot series

Robots and Empire is a 1985 novel by Isaac Asimov that unites the author’s robot mystery novels (The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, and The Robots of Dawn) and his Empire novels (Pebble in the Sky, The Stars, Like Dust, and The Currents of Space) into the same future history.

Plot

The story takes place about 200 years after the events described in the The Robots of Dawn. Earth people have begun to colonize new worlds, calling themselves "Settlers," as opposed to the "Spacers" from the previous wave of emigration. Settlers differ from Spacers in that they do not have longer life spans, they do not use robots, and they have stronger and more recent ties to Earth, which the Spacers still hold in contempt.

Gladia Delmarre, still living on Aurora, is now the owner of the robots R. Daneel Olivaw and Giskard—willed to her after Fastolfe’s death. She is visited by a roboticist named Dr. Mandamus, who describes his relationship with Dr. Amadiro, who is still influential in robotics research, and still bitter about his defeat at the hands of Fastolfe and Gladia 200 years earlier (Spacers like Gladia and Amadiro can live to be 350 years old). Mandamus also refers Gladia to a Settler trader who wishes to see her. The trader introduces himself as Daneel Giskard (D. G.) Baley; he is a direct descendant of Elijah Baley, and he lives on Baleyworld, a planet founded by Elijah Baley and his family when they left Earth. He says that he wants to take Gladia to the world of her birth, Solaria (the planet described in the novel The Naked Sun). He says that the people of Solaria have mysteriously abandoned the planet and gone off to places unknown, but they left behind all of their robots. D. G., being a businessman, would like to salvage some of those robots and sell them for a profit. The problem is that two Settler merchant ships have already landed on Solaria, and both were destroyed by persons or things unknown. D. G. hopes that Gladia, as a native of the planet, will help his crew to survive the visit. Gladia agrees to go with him.

Gladia takes her two robots, Daneel and Giskard, with her. They land on Gladia’s old estate, and start a conversation with some of the local robots. Soon they are attacked by several robots, and barely escape with their lives. On board ship, they deduce that the Solarian robots had been programmed to accept only a Solarian accent as human. Gladia had a Solarian accent; but the others did not, and so the Solarian robots could attack without believing they were violating the First Law of Robotics.

D. G. takes Gladia and her robots to Baleyworld. Meanwhile Giskard and Daneel are working on some puzzles; they wonder where all the Solarians have gone, and what Mandamus and Dr. Amadiro are up to; they suspect it is something dangerous. Shortly after their arrival on Baleyworld, the Auroran government sends a message demanding that Gladia be returned to Aurora. Giskard and Daneel suspect that the order is a pretext; they think that Giskard’s special powers have been discovered, and that the Aurorans want to get hold of Giskard.

Fastolfe had an estranged daughter, Vasilia, herself an excellent roboticist. She is bitter because her father’s will left the robot Giskard to Gladia, even though Giskard had been her pet project when she was a child. It was Vasilia who had tinkered with Giskard, unwittingly making him telepathic. Only now, however, does Vasilia begin to suspect what she has done, and she tells Amadiro that Giskard might be a telepathic robot with the ability to influence human minds. Amadiro uses his influence in the government to send the message asking Gladia (and hence Giskard) to return to Aurora. When they come, Vasilia arranges to meet with Daneel, Giskard, and Gladia. In a difficult conversational battle, Giskard gets the upper hand and influences Vasilia’s mind to forget all about the changes she made to Giskard, and to give up her efforts to recover the robot. Then the three of them leave on D. G.’s ship for Earth.

Daneel and Giskard now have reason to believe that Amadiro is planning something nasty on Earth, but they tell no one else about it. They are also having discussions among themselves about the need for a psychohistory, and of what Daneel calls the Zeroth Law—that a robot must not allow humanity to come to harm, even if it means allowing harm to come to individual humans, in violation of the First Law. Giskard tentatively rejects the Zeroth Law, because it is too abstract, and such abstractions have been used in the past to justify all sorts of barbarities and atrocities.

When they arrive on Earth, Gladia is called to speak at public functions. At one of these rallies, someone in the crowd takes a shot at the stage; Daneel pulls Giskard away from danger, rather than Gladia (who would have been the obvious target). The assassin is one of Amadiro’s humaniform robots, and on questioning, the assassin can only mutter three words, of which only the second word is intelligible: "mile." Daneel soon concludes that Amadiro and Mandamus, who are now on Earth, plan to put nuclear intensifiers near pockets of uranium and thorium, to increase the background radiation of Earth, and therefore make the planet uninhabitable. This, they believe, would demoralize the Settler colonies and pave the way for the success of the Spacer worlds. A government energy official suggests that the assassin, before he self-destructed, might have been trying to say "Three Mile Island." Daneel immediately realizes that this is correct, since the area is taboo, and therefore abandoned by both people and robots. Daneel and Giskard immediately go to the site.

Mandamus and Amadiro are there, just finishing their project. Mandamus wants to set the nuclear intensifiers to a level that would make Earth uninhabitable in 150 years; this would allow the people plenty of time to emigrate. But Amadiro is an old man; he wants his revenge now, while he’s still alive, and he pulls a gun on Mandamus and demands that the intensifiers be set at maximum level, even though that will kill billions of people. Daneel and Giskard show up and disarm Amadiro. Amadiro orders them away, but they flagrantly disobey him, following instead the Zeroth Law, which they now believe supercedes the three Laws of Robotics. Giskard then enters Amadiro’s mind to erase his knowledge of the entire nuclear intensifier plan. But then Mandamus argues with Daneel, and in an instant lunges at the intensifier switch, and activates it, setting off the irreversible chain reaction that will make Earth nearly uninhabitable within 150 years. Giskard then explains to Daneel that he used his mind control powers to encourage Mandamus to throw the switch, and to block Daneel from stopping him. Giskard believed that Earth was actually hindering Settler expansion, and that its elimination, far from demoralizing the Settlers, will actually encourage more expansion. But the possible harm he has done in violation of the First Law is too much—Giskard tells Daneel that he has modified Daneel’s mind to the point where Daneel will have the telepathic abilities that Giskard had. Then Giskard dies.

Related Works

Most of the main characters in Robots and Empire had already appeared in earlier Asimov novels. Giskard and Amadiro had been in The Robots of Dawn. Gladia had been in that book, plus The Naked Sun, and of course Daneel had been in both of those books, plus The Caves of Steel. The extensive radioactivity of Earth, triggered at the end of the book, is mentioned several times in the Empire novels, especially in Pebble in the Sky (1950). Daneel and Giskard discuss the need for a psychohistory, which forms the basis for the Foundation series of books. The "Zeroth Law"—the notion that the Three Laws of Robotics imply a higher law that would protect humanity, even at the cost of the lives of individual humans—is one of the central themes of the 2004 Hollywood film version of I, Robot, although the film does not use the phrase "Zeroth Law." The question of what happened to the inhabitants of Solaria is addressed again in the novel Foundation and Earth (1993).

Cover Art

At the end of one of their conversations, Giskard and Daneel shake hands. When Michael Whelan painted the original book cover, he depicted this scene (pictured above). Whelan explained the painting:

Again Giskard is pivotal, so he stands right in the center, with the center point of the circular window (the future) being his "heart," or where his heart would be were he human. The planet's fate hangs over him like a Damoclean sword. In the end, he must decide the fate of Earth's millions of souls, and later he passes this task on to the robot Daneel. For me, this handshake symbolizes the transference of duty from one robot to the other.

(From Michael Whelan's Works of Wonder, 1987, p. 36.)