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{{work}}
A 1954 [[Science Fiction]]
''[[The Caves of Steel]]'' takes place in a future [[Big Applesauce|New York City]]. On the overpopulated future Earth, cities are [[Mega City|gigantic metropolises]] [[Domed Hometown|encased under steel domes]] where people live in cramped conditions and subsist on processed food, never seeing the sky. In contrast, the Spacer worlds, human-colonized planets which severed political ties with Earth long ago, are utopian locales of low population, plentiful resources, massive military power, and economies based on the widescale use of robots for manual labor.
It is in this New York that a murder is committed: the victim is a Spacer, one of the residents of Spacetown, the Spacer outpost in New York. It is suspected that one of the motives was anti-robot sentiments; the victim was a roboticist who was working on the large-scale introduction of robot labor into Earth's economy, a desire opposed by most of the populace - sometimes to the point of terrorist aggression. If the murderer is not found--fast--a major diplomatic incident looms.
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The investigator is Elijah "Lije" Baley, whose Spacer-assigned partner will be an android, R. Daneel Olivaw, a new type of robot externally indistinguishable from a human. The opposition between Lije's impulsiveness and unorthodox methods, and Daneel's pure logical thinking and adherence to the law and procedure, is a theme throughout much of the book. Another theme is the nature of the society of Earth's Cities and how stable it is in the long run.
''The Caves Of Steel'' was followed by two sequel novels, ''[[
The series reached a finale of sorts in ''[[
----
{{tropelist}}
* [[Always Someone Better]]: Daneel is stronger than Lije, smarter than Lije, and never needs to rest or eat; Lije has to worry about the robot solving the case before him, and every aspect of the robot's superiority is seen as a threat to his job.
* [[Author Appeal]]: The crowded underground cities of Earth would be hellish to a claustrophobe, but Asimov was a claustro''phile''.
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** Daneel was created to be an undercover observer of Earth society to discover the problems in the plan before Sarton's murder. {{spoiler|Repurposing Daneel as a detective was primarily an excuse for him to fulfill his original mission.}}
* [[Big Applesauce]]
* [[Born in
* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: At the very beginning of the book, Lije notices that {{spoiler|Enderby is wearing new glasses, as he broke his old pair}}. At the end of the novel, this seemingly random bit of information ends up becoming the piece that puts the whole case together for Lije.
* [[Chekhov's Gunman]]: {{spoiler|R. Sammy}}.
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* [[Cranial Processing Unit]]: Inherent to all robots.
* [[Cyberpunk]]: The City [[Unbuilt Trope|anticipates]] the dystopian urban landscape of [[Cyberpunk]], almost 30 years before [[Blade Runner]] and [[William Gibson]], but it was not necessarily intended to be dystopian. The idea of a vast, totally enclosed city did not bother Asimov at all (See [[Author Appeal]]).
* [[Dirty Foreigner]]: protagonist Elijah Baley notes that the Earth rhyme against the foreign "Spacers" (people who settled worlds besides Earth) always seems to include "Dirty Spacers", and that "dirty" seems to be a common insult against those you hate. Ironically, the Spacers consider Earth people as dirty, and are correct, as the Spacers have eliminated most communicable diseases and compared to them, Earth people are bags of disease and a danger to Spacers due to a mostly unused Spacer immune system.
** In addition, when Elijah Baley visits a Spacer world in the sequel, the bathroom is so clean it gleams (because it is cleaned by robots after every use and uses advanced materials) that he wonders how he will adjust when he had to go back to using communal bathrooms on Earth.
* [[Domed Hometown]]: All the cities of Earth (and what is, in our time, known as the "greater metropolitan area" thereof) are enclosed under massive domes.
* [[Dropped Glasses]]: Critical to the case.
* [[Eating Machine]]: Daneel, thanks to a compartment hidden within his stomach, all to better impersonate a human. He does not derive any actual nutrition from the food, and needs to regularly empty his stomach sack to prevent the food from spoiling and emitting an unpleasant odor. Daneel promises that the food is still edible when Lije misses a meal, but Baley refuses the offer.
* [[Eureka Moment]]: Elijah figures out the answer to the mystery when Daneel casually brings up {{spoiler|Enderby's glasses}}.
* [[Fair Play
* [[Fantastic Racism]]: Robots are addressed as "boy," lack permission to travel in the high-class means of transportation and are treated with general contempt by Earth's inhabitants. One of the major bones of contention is that they have come to Earth and are taking jobs away from the local humans. Significantly, R. Sammy may have been named for a racial slur once used to describe people from India.
* [[Genre Busting]]: Sci-fi robot detective stories.
* [[Go and Sin No More]]: Said word-for-word by Daneel to {{spoiler|the police chief.}}
* [[Manic Pixie Dream Girl]]: Jessie was when she and Elijah met, but she has mellowed by the time of the novel itself.
{{quote|
And she kept Lije Baley from sinking down }}
* [[Mega City]]: Where the population of Earth lives. On average, 11.2 million in each city. The government's of three large cities (New York, Philadelphia and Washington) are considering merging into one single ''Mega'' Mega City, but the logistics of maintaining and governing such a large conglomerate have so far prevented any action on the plan.
* [[Murder
* [[Never Accepted in His Hometown]]: The Robots were created, developed and mass produced right on Earth almost three thousand years before the beginning of the novel, and were integral in the technological revolution that lead to space-travel, food for the whole planet and world peace, but they were never accepted into Earth society and were completely banned from the planet soon after their creation. It is only through the direct intervention of the Spacers, who have completely integrated robots into their way of life, that they are even beginning to merge with the Earthlings.
* [[Not
* [[Only Electric Sheep Are Cheap]]: Natural (non-processed) food is a luxury good.
* [[Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions]]: The Spacers have abandoned religion long ago.
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* [[Terrified of Germs]]: The Spacers are paranoid about being infected with human microbes. On their utopian planets they have no disease and their immune systems have decayed as a result.
* [[To Be Lawful or Good]]: Understanding that the conflict even ''exists'', much less wrestling with it, is a big part of R. Daneel's [[Character Development]].
* [[The Un
{{quote|
Baley shook his head. "Don't bother, R. Daneel. It doesn't do a thing for you."'' }}
* [[Uncanny Valley]]: In-universe, one of the reasons why robots - at least the current generation - are so unpopular on Earth; they are clunky mechanical units with disturbing facsimiles of permanently-smiling human faces on their "heads." Daneel is an attempt by his creator to avert this.
* [[Wandering Jew]]: The legend of the Wandering Londoner appears to be the equivalent for Baley.
* [[We Will Have Perfect Health in
* [[We Will Use Manual Labor in
* [[When the Clock Strikes Twelve]]: Near the end of the book, {{spoiler|Daneel notifies Lije that, since he's gathered the information Fastolfe wanted about Earther society, the investigation is being ended that day. Desperately worried about the consequences failure would have for his career, and with a brand-new [[Eureka Moment]] running through his mind, Baley manages to persuade his robot partner that they're still on the case until the day ends at midnight. Sure enough, they manage to extract a confession from the murderer right at the stroke of 12.}}
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[[Category:The Fifties]]
[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]
[[Category:The Caves
[[Category:Literature]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Caves of Steel, The}}
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