I, Robot is a first book in the series of Robot novels written by Asimov. It is a collection of short stories depicting the changes in human life with the incoming of robots. We have always wondered how the robots will change our life and this book very well describes it. This book marks the beginning for the robot science fiction from Asimov and lays the foundation for the the robot series and the foundation series. The robotics laws set in this book is followed throughout all the science fiction books written by him. Though the stories seem independent of each other they are chronologically related with the development of robot technology and how the robots influenced the humanity and human development. It begins when the robots as just mechanical devices that could not speak and did programmed tasks and ends when the robots that can make decisions for the making human life better and stand between mankind and their destruction.

There are stories about robots going mad, reading minds, being humorous, robot politicians, and robots running the whole world. It is a well written book and each story describes the challenges faced by the humans trying to make a better and superior robot. The robots are built on the three basic laws of robotics. They must not harm human beings, they must obey human orders and they must protect their own existence unless the first and the second laws are not violated. The first robots were the kinds built for specific purposes with no intelligence of their own and lacked speech. Then came the robots with speech and intelligence with ability to learn. The last are the robots with decision making ability and they made decision for the whole humanity. There are also stories how robots go rogue and starts thinking of themselves as superior to human beings, but these issues are identified and fixed.

“I, Robot” was published in 1950 and includes the stories that were written in 1940s. The stories prove that Asimov was a great visionary and had a deep knowledge of science. This is a must read book for all science fiction fans.

As the saying, “The rung of ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to support your weight long enough to reach something higher”, this book is a rung of Asimov’s ladder of success as he goes on to become one of the most respected science fiction writers in the world

Bottom Line: Describes very well the start of robotics which is the foundation of many Asimov’s novels.