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mindless body, discovers that the robot has all the necessary human equipment (and of course, later on, discovers the same thing about Gladia). |
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Other changes had been created by the passing of the years and the events of the early 1980s. Asimov approached the task of writing his Robot novels sequel in a different frame of mind than he approached the writing of The Caves of Steel or The Naked Sun or even Foundation's Edge. While he was writing The Caves of Steel, he was trying to please Horace Gold, the demanding editor of Galaxy who had suggested the idea to him, and Walter Bradbury, the editor at Doubleday who had published his first novel and had "copiously red-penciled" his second and shepherded him through several more, including the juvenile novels he was writing under the name of Paul French. As a consequence, he wrote in his autobiography that his writing had become "more direct and spare." |
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The one thing that one cannot say about The Robots of Dawn is that the writing is direct and spare. The Robots of Dawn sprawls over 419 pages while The Caves of Steel requires only 202 and The Naked Sun only 195. The third volume in the trilogy is longer than the first two volumes combined, and the third volume contains no more action than either of the others, and perhaps not as much. What occupies the extra space is dialogue, lots of it; it goes on and on. It is good dialogue, because Asimov has something to say, and he cannot write uninterestingly; and the formal mystery proceeds, traditionally and necessarily, by question and answer. In this particular situation, with Baley in an environment that is entirely new and exploring a technology and a culture not only alien to him but that must be laid out for the reader, many questions must be asked and answered that deal with matters beyond the actual investigation. Nevertheless, even though the novel reads well and the dialogue carries the story forward tensely (and surprisingly) enough, it does not come up to the balance of integrated dialogue and action, reflection and movement, that is characteristic of the first two novels. It is not "direct and spare." |
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Why it is not presents an interesting question. To be sure, Asimov makes the novel perform more than one function: integrating the robot universe and the Foundation universe takes space, not only for details but for theme, and in this respect Stableford was right insofar as the integration process does not coincide with the principal purpose of the novel it detracts from it. The novel is driven by Asimov's efforts to bring his novels into one consistent body of work. It contains numerous references to I, Robot, which is referred to as "legends" that have |
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