Caves of Steel

I just finished reading a science fiction crime novel called The Caves of Steel, written by Isaac Asimov. It is a good book about how a murder in the future affects the future of the Earth. The book is told from the viewpoint of a policeman by the name of Elijah Baley. The murder victim was from another planet. Elijah is paired up for the case with a robot named R. Daneel Olivaw (the “R” stands for robot). Daneel looks so much like a human, that no one recognizes him as a robot. Other robots on Earth look like machines. Elijah and Daneel have to work together, but Elijah does not like robots because he thinks humans should do their own work (on Spacer worlds robots do all the work). In the end, the murderer turned out to be Elijah’s boss (which is what I figured out by the middle of the book). The Commissioner killed the Spacer because he was a “medievalist”, which means he did not want Earth people to colonize other worlds. The victim was trying to get Earth people to colonize other worlds so that the Earth’s population would be reduced and people would live longer like the Spacers (300 years). In the book, Earth is very crowded with eight billion people living in huge cities covered by steel roofs. People have to share bathrooms and kitchens. They live close to each other for efficiency. I really liked this book because it showed how the Earth could be in the future, and the plot had many twists and turns.