The Caves of Steel

The Caves of Steel is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov. It is a detective story and illustrates an idea Asimov advocated, that science fiction can be applied to any literary genre, rather than just being a limited genre in itself. The book was first published as a serial in Galaxy magazine, from October to December 1953. A Doubleday hardcover followed in 1954. At the time of writing, Asimov conceived of The Caves of Steel as completely distinct from his Foundation Trilogy, published a few years earlier. Decades later, however, Asimov linked them, making the time of Caves of Steel a much earlier part of an extensive future history leading up to the rise of the Galactic Empire, its fall and the rise of two Foundations to replace it – with the Robot R. Daneel Olivaw, introduced in Caves of Steel, turning out to have survived over tens of thousands of years and have played a key role in the eras of both the Empire and the Foundation(s). Setup Isaac Asimov introduces Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw, later his favorite protagonists. They live roughly three millennia in Earth's future, a time when hyperspace travel has been discovered and a few worlds relatively close to Earth have been colonized – fifty planets known as the "Spacer worlds". The Spacer worlds are rich, have low population density (average population of one hundred million each), and use robot labor heavily. Meanwhile, Earth is overpopulated with eight billion people, three times that of Asimov's 1950s, with strict rules against robots. In The Caves of Steel and its sequels (the first of which is The Naked Sun), Asimov paints a grim situation of an Earth dealing with an extremely large population and of luxury-seeking Spacers, who limit birth to permit great wealth and privacy.