Reading Group Guide
Isaac Asimov's Robot series and Foundation series comprise some of the greatest classics in their genre. They probe the questions of technology and destiny, war and politics that have captured readers' imaginations for generations.
I, Robot, the first and most widely read book in Asimov's Robot series, is a collection of nine stories that forever changed the world's perception of artificial intelligence. Here are stories of sensitive robots, robots gone mad, mind-reading robots, prankster robots, and closeted robots that secretly dominate politics. Chronicling the robot's development from primitive prototype to ultimate perfection, I, Robot blends scientific fact with science fiction in Asimov's provocative style.
Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation tell the story of Hari Seldon, a brilliant visionary who synthesized history, psychology, and mathematical probability to shape a bold commandment for the future and steer humanity through a series of brutal eras. Following the collapse of a Galactic Empire, Hari gathered together the top scientists and scholars on a bleak planet at the very edge of the Galaxy in order to preserve the accumulated knowledge of mankind. He called his sanctuary the Foundation and designed it to withstand a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that would last for the next thirty thousand years. But not even Hari could have predicted the intense barbarism lurking in space, or the birth of an extraordinary creature whose mutant intelligence would destroy all that Hari held dear.
The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your reading of these fourclassics written by one of the most widely recognized fiction authors of our time.
1. Do Asimov's now-famous Three Laws of Robotics mirror humanity's ethics code in any way? Whose orders are human beings required to obey? Do our definitions of "harm" ever lead to the same confounding dilemmas experienced in I, Robot?
2. Why was Gloria's mother unable to accept Robbie as an excellent nursemaid? Was Robbie premonitory on Asimov's part—a prediction that children in the twenty-first century might form intense emotional attachments to electronics?
3. Cutie (QT) questions his origins and finds it impossible to believe that a human created him. In what ways did Powell and Donovan reinforce this belief?
4. Does the case of Stephen Byerley indicate that robots might make better politicians? Would this only hold true if, as the novel envisions, nations dissolve into massive world regions?
5. What is the ultimate commodity produced by U.S. Robot & Mechanical Men, Inc.? Does our global workforce follow this model in any way? Were humor and compassion inevitable traits in the robots? Do these traits interfere with productivity in the world of I, Robot?
6. In the book's closing lines, Dr. Susan Calvin tells the narrator, "You will see what comes next," as robots stand between mankind and destruction. How did her career lead up to such a precarious conclusion?
7. I, Robot has been turned into a major motion picture starring Will Smith. How does the movie compare with your book-reading experience? What do you think of the adjustments made and liberties taken when converting this collection of stories to one seamless film adaptation?
8. Foundation opens with the perspective of Gaal Dornick, "a country boy who had never seen Trantor before." What is the effect of opening the novel with Gaal's observations? Why did Hari Seldon extend such an invitation to Gaal?
9. In the trial portrayed in chapter 6, the Commission's Advocate repeatedly rejects Hari's deductions regarding the future. What has made Hari a target for exile? Why are his projections—supported by seemingly irrefutable logic and mathematics—so easily dismissed by his accusers?
10. Part 3 of Foundation begins with an entry from the Encyclopedia Galactica that reads, "Undoubtedly the most interesting aspect of the history of the four Kingdoms involves the strange society forced temporarily upon it during the administration of Salvor Hardin." In what ways does Hardin distinguish himself from the other rulers described in the novel? What conditions fostered his rise to power?
11. The Foundation is intended in some ways as a kind of religious center. What are its doctrines? Can a religion of science fail?
12. Discuss the novel's references to energy—in this case, nuclear power—in relation to political and economic supremacy. What other forces drive the novel's hierarchies of dominance? How does the role of the Traders evolve in the novel's closing chapters?
13. What were the root causes of the Foundation's fall? Could its demise have been avoided, even after war had begun?
14. As Lord of the Universe, is Cleon II naïve or perceptive? In what ways do his sensibilities affect his fate?
15. What, ultimately, is the source of the Mule's power to perform Conversions in Foundation and Empire? What role did psychology play in his own origins?
16. Do the Independent Trading Worlds accurately perceive their vulnerabilities? In contrast, what perpetuated Neotrantor's survival?
17. Bayta's final conversation with the Mule explains his moniker as well as his perceptions of how power is perpetuated. What does this dialogue indicate about gender roles in the realm of the Second Foundation, and about the possibility of democracy?Discuss the spectrum of characters affected by the Mule in Second Foundation's five opening interludes. In what ways do the Mule's tactics vary?
18. Discuss the spectrum of characters affected by the Mule in Second Foundation's five opening interludes. In what ways do the Mule's tactics vary?
19. In what ways does Bail Channis's personality reflect a cultural shift from the previous Foundation novels?
20. Near the beginning of the fifteenth chapter, Arcadia is described as "dressed in borrowed clothes, standing on a borrowed planet in a borrowed situation of what seemed even to be a borrowed life." In what ways is she both an unlikely and an ideal savior?
21. . Scholarship such as the Encyclopedia project represented Hari's belief in the power of learning (and even the power of the mind itself, in the form of neural microcurrents). To what extent is a civilization's success measured by the survival of its knowledge?
22. The final chapter of Second Foundation offers a thoughtful coda to the novel. What is the "true" question to that chapter's "answer that was true?"
23. If Hari Seldon's equations were applied to Earth's societies, what might the results be?
24. What connotations and root words were you able to derive from the character names and geographic locations featured in the series?
25. How does the series evolve as a whole? What overarching narrative is propelled by the events that occur within the individual books?
26. Isaac Asimov wrote these three books very early in his career, during the 1950s—an era marked by the Cold War, McCarthyism, and the early stages of the space race. How might the events of this period have shaped the Foundation storyline?
27. In what sense does the trilogy offer a cautionary tale for contemporary leaders in politics, science, and the humanities?
Read an Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
I looked at my notes and I didn't like them. I'd spent three days at U.S. Robots and might as well have spent them at home with the Encyclopedia Tellurica.
Susan Calvin had been born in the year 1982, they said, which made her seventy-five now. Everyone knew that. Appropriately enough, U.S. Robot and Mechanical Men, Inc. was seventy-five also, since it had been in the year of Dr. Calvin's birth that Lawrence Robertson had first taken out incorporation papers for what eventually became the strangest industrial giant in man's history. Well, everyone knew that, too.
At the age of twenty, Susan Calvin had been part of the particular Psycho-Math seminar at which Dr. Alfred Lanning of U.S. Robots had demonstrated the first mobile robot to be equipped with a voice. It was a large, clumsy unbeautiful robot, smelling of machine-oil and destined for the projected mines on Mercury. - But it could speak and make sense.
Susan said nothing at that seminar; took no part in the hectic discussion period that followed. She was a frosty girl, plain and colorless, who protected herself against a world she disliked by a mask-like expression and a hypertrophy of intellect. But as she watched and listened, she felt the stirrings of a cold enthusiasm.
She obtained her bachelor's degree at Columbia in 2003 and began graduate work in cybernetics.
All that had been done in the mid-twentieth century on "calculating machines" had been upset by Robertson and his positronic brain-paths. The miles of relays and photocells had given way to the spongy globe of plantinumiridium about the size of a human brain.
She learned to calculate the parameters necessary to fix the possible variables within the "positronic brain"; to construct "brains" on paper such that the responses to given stimuli could be accurately predicted.
In 2008, she obtained her Ph.D. and joined United States Robots as a "Robopsychologist," becoming the first great practitioner of a new science. Lawrence Robertson was still president of the corporation; Alfred Lanning had become director of research.
For fifty years, she watched the direction of human progress change - and leap ahead.
Now she was retiring - as much as she ever could. At least, she was allowing someone else's name to be inset upon the door of her office.
That, essentially, was what I had. I had a long list of her published papers, of the patents in her name; I had the chronological details of her promotions - In short I had her professional "vita" in full detail.
But that wasn't what I wanted.
I needed more than that for my feature articles for Interplanetary Press. Much more.
I told her so.
"Dr. Calvin," I said, as lushly as possible, "in the mind of the public you and U.S. Robots are identical. Your retirement will end an era and -"
"You want the human-interest angle?" She didn't smile at me. I don't think she ever smiles. But her eyes were sharp, though not angry. I felt her glance slide through me and out my occiput and knew that I was uncommonly transparent to her; that everybody was.
But I said, "That's right."
"Human interest out of robots? A contradiction."
"No, doctor. Out of you."
"Well, I've been called a robot myself. Surely, they've told you I'm not human."
They had, but there was no point in saying so.
She got up from her chair. She wasn't tall and she looked frail. I followed her to the window and we looked out.
The offices and factories of U.S. Robots were a small city; spaced and planned. It was flattened out like an aerial photograph.
"When I first came here," she said, "I had a little room in a building right about there where the fire-house is now." She pointed. "It was torn down before you were born. I shared the room with three others. I had half a desk. We built our robots all in one building. Output - three a week. Now look at us."
"Fifty years," I hackneyed, "is a long time."
"Not when you're looking back at them," she said. "You wonder how they vanished so quickly."
She went back to her desk and sat down. She didn't need expression on her face to look sad, somehow.
"How old are you?" she wanted to know.
"Thirty-two," I said.
"Then you don't remember a world without robots. There was a time when humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now he has creatures to help him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to him. Mankind is no longer alone. Have you ever thought of it that way?"
"I'm afraid I haven't. May I quote you?"
"You may. To you, a robot is a robot. Gears and metal; electricity and positrons. - Mind and iron! Human-made! if necessary, human-destroyed! But you haven't worked with them, so you don't know them. They're a cleaner better breed than we are."
I tried to nudge her gently with words, "We'd like to hear some of the things you could tell us; get your views on robots. The Interplanetary Press reaches the entire Solar System. Potential audience is three billion, Dr. Calvin. They ought to know what you could tell them on robots."
It wasn't necessary to nudge. She didn't hear me, but she was moving in the right direction.
"They might have known that from the start. We sold robots for Earth-use then - before my time it was, even. Of course, that was when robots could not talk. Afterward, they became more human and opposition began. The labor unions, of course, naturally opposed robot competition for human jobs, and various segments of religious opinion had their superstitious objections. It was all quite ridiculous and quite useless. And yet there it was."
I was taking it down verbatim on my pocket-recorder, trying not to show the knuckle-motions of my hand. If you practice a bit, you can get to the point where you can record accurately without taking the little gadget out of your pocket.
"Take the case of Robbie," she said. "I never knew him. He was dismantled the year before I joined the company - hopelessly out-of-date. But I saw the little girl in the museum -"
She stopped, but I didn't say anything. I let her eyes mist up and her mind travel back. She had lots of time to cover.
"I heard about it later, and when they called us blasphemers and demon-creators, I always thought of him. Robbie was a non-vocal robot. He couldn't speak. He was made and sold in 1996. Those were the days before extreme specialization, so he was sold as a nurse-maid -"
"As a what?"
"As a nursemaid -"
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