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The Naked Sun is a 1957 novel by Isaac Asimov, a sequel to his earlier novel The Caves of Steel. It features, once again, a murder mystery investigated by Elijah Baley and his partner, R. Daneel Olivaw.

Plot

Some months after the events described in The Caves of Steel, a “fetal engineer” named Rikaine Delmarre is murdered on the planet Solaria. The authorities on that planet have requested Baley’s help, because they were impressed with his handling of the Sarton murder. Baley is reluctant, because he, like all Earth men in his time, is severely agoraphobic. Earth authorities have ordered Baley to comply with the request, because they believe that Spacer arrogance toward Earth will someday lead to an Earth revolt, but Earth people are so restricted in their movements that they know virtually nothing about Spacer culture. They ask Baley to travel to Solaria for the investigation, and to keep his eyes and ears open, so that he can report back whatever he sees. R. Daneel Olivaw is sent with him to help him understand Spacer culture and politics.

Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.

Solaria was settled about 300 years earlier, originally as a planet of summer villas. Eventually, people began staying all year round, and now the planet has about 10,000 inhabitants, serviced by some 200 million robots. The people of Solaria have developed a paranoid isolation from each other, almost never entering the same room as another person. All of their needs are met by their robots, and when they must communicate with people, they do so using “trimensional viewing” (holographic projectors). Actually being in the same room with another person, an activity the Solarians call “seeing,” is extremely distasteful to them. The Solarians, who have a very rich, robot-based economy, build a villa for Baley and Daneel’s use while they are on the planet, but that house will be destroyed when they leave.

When Baley demands that he be allowed to “see” suspects and witnesses, rather than just “viewing” them holographically, his request is met with resistance and distaste. Marriages and children are assigned on Solaria, and child-rearing is done wherever possible by robots (however, robots are not able to discipline children very well, because it causes conflicts with the First Law of Robotics.) Daneel tells Baley that many Spacer worlds view Solaria with some mistrust, though he is not sure why.

The murder occurred when the victim’s wife, Gladia, reportedly heard a scream, and rushed to her husband’s room, where she found his skull crushed. There were several robots in the room, but most people assume that Gladia must be the killer, since robots could not violate the First Law, and it is unlikely any Solarian other than the victim's wife would be willing to be in the same room with him. Baley eventually tries to argue that a robot could participate in a murder under the right circumstances. For instance, a robot might serve poisoned coffee to a human, if the robot was unaware of the poison.

After some false starts, Baley solves the crime, showing that the murder weapon was a robot’s detachable arm. The murderer was trying to cover up a plan to conquer the galaxy by equipping unmanned spaceships with positronic brains; the ships would assume that other ships are also unmanned, and so would be able to destroy them without thinking they are violating the First Law of Robotics.

After the case is solved, the widow, Gladia Delmarre, decides to leave Solaria, and moves to the planet Aurora (she will be an important character in the next two books in the series, The Robots of Dawn and Robots and Empire). Baley returns to Earth, believing now that Spacer reliance on robots and long lifespans have made them too cautious, and that Earth people, with their shorter lives and sense of adventure, will be the ones to settle the rest of the galaxy.

Related Works

This book was followed by The Robots of Dawn (1983), which also featured the characters Elijah Baley, R. Daneel Olivaw, and Gladia Delmarre. Daneel and Gladia would also appear in Robots and Empire (1985). Later versions of the planet Solaria are featured in the novels Robots and Empire and Foundation and Earth (1993).

On February 18, 1969, the British science fiction / horror anthology series, "Out of the Unknown", broadcast a one hour adaptation of The Naked Sun, with Paul Maxwell as Elijah Baley, David Collings as Daneel, and Trisha Noble as Gladia.