The Caves of Steel (1954)
The Caves of Steel is a 1954 robots book written by Isaac Asimov.
A Spacer diplomat lies murdered in the raw territory between two civilizations that can barely stand each other, and New York detective Elijah Baley draws the case. His assigned partner is R. Daneel Olivaw, a robot built to pass for human, which is precisely the thing Baley trusts least. Asimov sets the mystery inside a future Earth where billions live sealed in vast domed cities, the open sky an unthinkable terror. The result is a straight detective story wearing science fiction, a working proof of Asimov's claim that the two genres could comfortably share the same page.
Quick answers
What is The Caves of Steel about?
A Spacer diplomat lies murdered in the raw territory between two civilizations that can barely stand each other, and New York detective Elijah Baley draws the case. His assigned partner is R. Daneel Olivaw, a robot built to pass for human, which is precisely the thing Baley trusts least. Asimov sets the mystery inside a future Earth where billions live sealed in vast domed cities, the open sky an unthinkable terror. The result is a straight detective story wearing science fiction, a working proof of Asimov's claim that the two genres could comfortably share the same page.
When was The Caves of Steel published?
The Caves of Steel was published in 1954.
Who made The Caves of Steel?
The Caves of Steel was written by Isaac Asimov.
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The Caves of Steel in our writing
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- Companion guide: Robots & AI
A few thoughts on The Caves of Steel
Baley's partnership with a machine he cannot quite trust runs straight into Ghost in the Shell, another detective story set in a sealed city where the line between human and synthetic keeps blurring. Silo shares his deepest fear, a whole population living underground and afraid of the surface. On film, Blade Runner is the natural next stop.
A human detective forced to trust a robot partner who could pass for a man
Elijah Baley works his murder case next to R. Daneel Olivaw, a robot built to pass for a man, and spends The Caves of Steel deciding how much to trust a partner he can't tell apart from a human. Silo, Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner and Appleseed all pair a human investigator with an artificial partner inside a dense, controlled city, using that uneasy partnership to carry the mystery.
Entire societies sealed away from open sky and daylight
The Caves of Steel imagines an Earth where billions live sealed inside vast domed cities, and the open sky has become a terror nobody living remembers how to face. BioShock, Portal, Portal 2 and The People of Sparks all trap their characters inside a fully enclosed, artificial world, and treat the idea of open air and daylight as something the characters have to relearn from nothing.
A small case that turns into a much bigger political conspiracy
A single Spacer's murder in The Caves of Steel keeps widening into the much larger, more dangerous politics between Earth and the Spacer worlds that Baley never asked to get involved in. The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Arkham Asylum, 20th Century Boys and BioShock Infinite all start small, a crime, a lockdown, a childhood promise, before revealing a political conspiracy the hero is now stuck inside.