Talk:Isaac Asimov's Robot Series

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Literature Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Books. To participate, you can edit the article attached to this page. You can discuss the Project at its talk page.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

There was a short lived series of books based on Robot series with the title Isaac Asimov's Robot City written by other writers. The usual stuff. Some greedy editor using Asimov's fame (the books have introductions written by Asimov, but i don't know if they were written especially for this books).

Odyssey (1987) by Michael P. Kube-McDowell; Suspicion (1987) by Mike McQuay; Cyborg (1987) by William F. Wu; Prodigy (1988) by Arthur Byron Cover; Refuge (1988) by Rob Chilson; Perihelion (1988) by William F. Wu.

There were plans for more 6 books but AFAIK they were never published or even written.

There were more (Robots and Aliens, Robots in Time etc.). They are already mentioned under "Other authors". Ausir 11:26, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 Outer Limits 2 Star Trek references 3 Is there an order in the robot series? 4 Spoilers

[edit] Outer Limits

The I, Robot episode of Outer Limits is based on Eando Binder's short story, I, Robot, and is unrelated to Isaac Asimov; except that the title for Asimov's first collection of robot stories was "borrowed" from Binder's short story (Asimov initially objected to this). See the Eando Binder page for more info. Srainwater 14:18, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Star Trek references

Is there a connection between Data's positrinic brain in Star Trek Next Generation and Asimov's positrinic brain? If so, shouldn't that be mentioned in some manner?

Yes, Data's brain is a homage to Asimov's robots. Ausir 17:00, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ausir is correct - they asked Asimov for permission and he agreed. I read that somewhere but I cannot remember where. →Raul654 20:03, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Is there an order in the robot series?

I've got three robot books, Robots of Dawn, Robots and Empire and Robot Dreams' and from the years they were written I conclude I should read them in that order. But do I need to read anything else first? (And do you recommend any followups?) Is there any buildup between the books? About 15 years ago I've read the Foundation trilogy and Fantastic Voyage in Spanish (which wasn't easy, to put it mildly - I'm not as much of a multilinguist as I like to fool myself into thinking :) ). But I've largely forgotten how those stories went. Should I read any of those again first? I haven't read the article in too detailed a fashion, afraid to read a spoiler (although the warning seems a bit exaggerated). Shouldn't this sort of info be included in the article (before the spoiler warning)? And not just for the Robot series of course. DirkvdM 20:06, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Robot Dreams is a collection of short stories. Robots of Dawn and Robots and Empire are novels. In terms of a timeline, the first novel would be Robot Dreams (Early 21st Century), then Robots of Dawn(3503 CE), and finally Robots and Empire (3505 CE to 3697 CE) where CE = Common Era = AD. This timeline lists the Robots and Foundation novels in the rightmost column ordered by date. Maybe you can cover the middle column with a piece of paper and figure out how you want to read them :) sikander 22:10, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a helpful link (that is the only external link, so why didn't I try that?). That makes clear in which order I should read the books I have, but I'm still unsure which books I might (want or need to) read before that. I've already started reading Robots of Dawn (impatient me) and there are plenty references to what happened before. Now there are two bases for the order of the books. One is the timeline, as in the link. The other is the order in which the books are written. For example, Caves of steel and Naked Sun were written in that order but are reversed in the timeline. So I suppose there won't be any references to Caves of steel in Naked Sun and the latter can be read separately from the former. But do I need to read both to fully understand Robots of Dawn? And what about I robot? And the foundation series? They're all interrelated, but what if someone wants to read a book somewhere in the middle. What books are 'advised reading' before that? I imagine making such an overview wouldn't be easy, or could at least a rough guideline be given?

For example, judging by the years in the left column (and trying to ignore the middle bit), my guess is that the following is a rounded off series: Naked Sun - Caves of Steel - Robots of Dawn - Robots and Empire. But then Robots and Empire makes a jump into the next century. Is that a prelude to the foundation series? And Naked Sun is in the timeline before and after Caves of Steel. What am I tomake of that? I don't ask just for me, but this is meant as a suggestion to make a 'logical timeline' of the books. Which I can't do yet until I've read all the books. Which might take some time. :) DirkvdM 07:38, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome. Asimov suggested a reading order in Prelude to Foundation and you can view that here without any spoilers. Personally I first read the Foundation trilogy, Second Foundation trilogy, Foundation's Edge, and Foundation and Earth. After finishing those I realized that there's an entire Robot series that has a ton of information and background about many characters found in the Foundation universe. I still enjoyed all of the books! Good luck and happy reading! sikander 21:39, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spoilers

I haven't read the article, but would it be possible to break the spoilers into a subsection of the article, leaving the majority spoiler-free? It just seems more useful if the ENTIRE article isn't barred behind a spoiler warning. Anne 23:26, 5 July 2006 (UTC)