“This is one of the books that connect robot, space, and Foundation series.
The space settlements series before this - Caves of Steel, Naked Sun, Robots of Dawn, and so on - that follows the original robot stories (of how they were developed and how the relationships went with humans) deals with humanity retreating to cities that are elaborate and completely covered so humans on earth do not venture out, often debilitated with agoraphobia, while space settlers are far better off with more land on their planets and more wealth, and robots to care for all their needs of manual work, whether personal or those of any other sort.
This brings about a state of affairs where the settlers look down on those that never ventured out from earth and live crowded and are afraid to be in open air, and restrict migration to their wealthy planets.
An obvious take off from the colonial era with robots representing the slaves of various nations on western continent.
This one explains how the state of affairs came to be as it was found in the foundations series, with the galaxy settled all over by humanity and robots (again, representing slavery) replaced by machines that do not resemble humans - as indeed various machines in use today including the ubiquitous computers do not. ”
Dr. J. G. wrote this review Thursday, October 16 2008.
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