I Robot: The Science Fiction Mysteries Of Isaac Asimov

With the release of I Robot in 2004, we once again had an opportunity to see Isaac Asimov’s vision of a world of robots come to life. His last film was the excellent Bicentennial Man, which did poorly at the box office. I Robot seems to have done better, largely because of the presence of Will Smith, who was one of the film’s producers, and a whole lot more action. But is I Robot truly an Asimovian film? More particularly, is it an Asimovian Science Fiction mystery?

20th Century Fox

Isaac Asimov has many claims to fame. One of the best known Science Fiction writers ever, he is the author of the famous Foundation series, the Robot series and the story “Nightfall”. If that weren’t enough, he wrote hundreds of books, many not Science Fiction. He wrote a mystery novel, juvenile non-fiction, adult non-fiction, hard science and even a junior Science Fiction series, Lucky Starr.

But in 1953, Asimov did something nobody had done before. He wrote the first true Science Fiction Mystery. “One would think that Science Fiction would blend easily with the mystery. Science itself is so nearly a Mystery and the research scientist so nearly a Sherlock Holmes…R. Austin Freeman’s Dr. Thorndyke is an example of a well-known and successful (fictional) scientist-detective.” Despite this no one had done it well before Asimov.

Art by James McMullen

Science Fiction writers had borrowed from the Mystery genre before 1953 but nobody had ever decided to write a Science Fiction story that played fair by the rules of the genre. Authors who tried include Robert Leslie Bellem, Mickey Spillane and Robert Bloch. Asimov outlines the problems for this task in his introduction to Asimov’s Mysteries (1968).

“Back in the late 1940’s, this was finally explained to me. I was told that “by its very nature” Science Fiction would not play fair with the reader. In a Science Fiction story, the detective could say, “But as you know, Watson, ever since 2175, when all Spaniards learned to speak French, Spanish has been a dead language. How came Juan Lopez, then, to speak those significant words in Spanish.

Or else, he could have his detective whip out an odd device and say, “as you know, Watson, my pocket-frannistan is perfectly capable of detecting the hidden jewel in a trice.”

Asimov also points out that a Science Fiction mystery must be more than a Mystery with science in it. The author must extrapolate something from the science, even if it is only the background. In other words: the story should not be possible in the usual world with the Science Fictional elements taken out. A good example of this type of story is Asimov’s own “What’s In a Name?” from The Saint Detective Magazine, June 1956, where it appeared as “Death of a Honey-Blonde”. He includes it (with apologies) in Asimov’s Mysteries even though it’s only a “science” mystery not a “Science Fiction” mystery.

Art by Jean Morton and Ruth Ray

To prove the nay-sayers wrong he wrote The Caves of Steel  in 1953, a Science Fiction novel that was also a mystery. The book features two unlikely detectives: Lije Bailey, a middle-aged denizen of an Earth that no longer lives out-of-doors. The cities of Earth have become a warren from which the people never leave. The Spacers are the race that live on the Outer Worlds, few and mortally afraid of infectious disease.

Asimov describes how the novel came to be in his 1983 reprint introduction: The Caves of Steel is a traditional murder mystery with a detective in Lije Baley. Like the awful buddy films of the last thirty years, Baley is saddled with a partner, a robot partner, R. Daneel Olivaw. The two must find the killer of a prominent Spacer or have Earth’s relations with the Outer Worlds destroyed just when they are crucial to Earth’s survival. The book does a great job of showing how humans can dwell in crowded, subterranean cities, a condition Asimov liked himself.

Having proven himself in a novel, Asimov created another detective to rival Bailey and R. Daneel Olivaw. Using the TBI (or Terrestrial Bureau of Investigations) mentioned in The Caves of Steel as a springboard, Asimov created the honorable policeman, H. Seton Davenport , who like Inspector Lestrade must resort to his own Sherlock Holmes. This detective genius is Dr. Wendell Urth, one of the world’s foremost extraologists. Ironically, Urth fears travel of any kind except walking, and in the tradition of Nero Wolfe, solves his mysteries from the comfort of his own home.

Professor Urth’s appearance is hardly one to inspire fear in criminals” “The man who owned the room had a large round face on a stumpy round body. He moved quickly about on his short legs, jerking his head as he spoke until his thick glasses all but bounced off the thoroughly inconspicuous nubbin that served in the office of nose. His thick-lidded, somewhat protruberant eyes gleamed in myopic good nature at them all…”

Art by Emsch

Urth’s first appearance is “The Singing Bell” The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (January 1955). The story is a murder mystery set on the moon. Louis Peyton, a criminal, double-crosses his partner, killing him for a fortune in singing bells, strange moon stones that hum beautifully when polished. Peyton is devious in that he has no alibi, only a set holiday from which he never wavers. The T. B. I. knows he is guilty but can’t shake him. They can use a psychoprobe on him but will not do so unless they have some evidence to warrant the invasion of his rights. Urth unravels Peyton’s deceit by remembering the effects of zero gravity on the human body.

Urth would make three more appearances in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The next two would follow quickly after “The Singing Bell”. “The Talking Stone”, Urth’s second appearance, was only months later in October 1955 issue. This time a rich asteroid of uranium is at stake. A rock lifeform called a silicony is the dying witness to the location of the asteroid. Urth solves the case by trying to understand the creature psychology. The similarities between this story and the “Devil in the Dark” episode of the original Star Trek are interesting.

“The Dying Night” (July 1956) followed less than a year later. Murder strikes in a convention of scientists, each from a distant planet or satellite. Urth must find which of three colleagues killed their old roommate, Villiers, for his brilliant matter transference technology. Once again Urth turns to psychology for his solution. Each one of the suspects reacts differently when the stolen plans are subjected to the bright light of an open window. Asimov describes where each scientist lived and what his home world was like. If he had wanted to write like those cheaters he mentioned, he would have hidden this information and pulled it out like a rabbit from a hat. Playing fair, he lays out all the science in an interesting way and hides the clues in the process. “The Dying Night” is also interesting in that it is one of several stories to feature rival scientists.

Art by Michael Whelan

The Naked Sun (1957) saw the return of Lije Bailey and R. Daneel Olivaw. As Asimov says of the sequel, “…just to show that the first book wasn’t an accident.” Bailey and Olivaw go to the Outer World of Solaria to find the killer of a man who lived entirely separate physically from others, a kind of locked-room mystery. Robots are involved, of course. Asimov has a chance to contrast how the Spacers live in their underpopulated, open worlds.

“The Dust of Death” (Venture Science Fiction January 1957) is part of the Wendell Urth series since its detective is none other than H. Seton Davenport of the TBI. In the introduction to the story in Asimov’s Mysteries, the author reveals that the story would have been another Urth tale “…but a new magazine was about to be published and I wanted to be represented in it with something that was not too clearly a holdover from another magazine.”

A scientist kills his superior when the credit for years of work is stolen from him. He murders the man by adding particles of dust to a piece of equipment that explodes. The solution hinges on the killer having been on Titan for several months. The solution is reminsicent of “The Singing Bell” and “The Dying Night”.  It is too bad Asimov didn’t rewrite the story as he threatened to in the introduction. “The Dust of Death” is not a strong tale. The science fiction elements are lacking and the solution is revealed without Urth’s usual flare. Davenport should have stayed in the supporting cast.

“I’m in Marsport without Hilda” (Venture Science Fiction November 1957) is Asimov’s space-spy story. He calls it “a James Bond type of story, written before I had ever heard of James Bond”. An unfaithful spy has the chance to enjoy another woman’s bed but this pesky assignment gets in the way. The agent has to figure out which one of three men is only pretending to be under the influence of Spaceoline, a drug used to survive faster-than-light space travel. Locked in a room with the three men, he finds his solution by telling ribald stories. Only the criminal reacts to the lewd stories. Free at last, the spy is on his way to meet his paramour when his wife unexpectedly turns up.

“The Key” is the last Wendell Urth story, written ten years after the initial trilogy for a special issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (October 1966), one that honored Isaac Asimov. Another murdered man on the moon leaves a strange diagram to tell where an alien artifact is hidden. The Ultras are a group of extremists who want to reduce the eight billion inhabitants of Earth to only five thousand. It’s a race with the Ultras for the alien machine. Urth solves the code as only he can for both the murderer and his victim were students of Urth’s at Eastern University. The final solution proves there to be no threat from the Ultras, as the alien device can only be activated by love. “The Key” is Urth’s final farewell. Fortunately, it is a good one.

Back in 1957, many thought the same for Lije Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw. But Asimov surprised them all with the first of two new robot detective novels. The Robots of Dawn (1983) is a much longer piece than either of its prequels. This time Lije Baley is sent to Aurora, the Spacer homeworld, to try and save a scientist who is friendly to earth’s new colonization program. Dr. Hans Fastolfe is accused with murdering — a robot!

Art by Barclay Shaw

Daneel Olivaw makes two more appearances. In Robots & Empire (1985) he joins forces with a descendant of Lije Baley to stop a plot to make Earth inhospitable to humans. In Prelude to Foundation (1985) Harry Seldon discovers a very old and semi-inoperative Olivaw in a church. Neither of these books are mysteries per-se but function more as stop-gaps between the Robot series and the Galactic Empire and Foundation series.

Asimov’s love affair with the mystery began with The Steel Caves but it continued on outside of his Lije Baley or Dr. Urth stories. Many of Asimov’s science fiction stories have elements of mystery in them (not enough to include them in this article though many are included in Asimov’s Mysteries). He wrote a straight murder mystery in 1958, The Death-Dealers (1958), reprinted as A Whiff of Death (1968), once again about chemical poisoning and academics. In 1971 at the invitation of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine he began his long series of mysteries known as The Black Widowers. He continued this series right up until his death in 1987.

Art by Robert Maguire

Now, to return to Will Smith and I Robot. First off, the film is “suggested by the books of Isaac Asimov”– in other words, it’s not an adaptation of one particular novel or story. This is fine since many of the original robot books were short story collections. Without doing an anthology film with say “Robbie” as one of three segments, this can’t be avoided.

The basic plot of the film is that in the Chicago of 2035 Dr.Alfred Lanning, the inventor of the Three Laws of Robotics, is killed after falling from a high window at US Robotics. Detective Spooner, played by Smith, is a cop who hates robots. Everybody else in the world accepts them as harmless and helpful devices. Spooner then begins to follow a trail of clues that include the book Hansel & Gretel and finally lead him and his reluctant assistant, Dr. Susan Calvin, to Sonny. Sonny looks like any other NS-5 robot but he is different. In a very Philip K. Dick moment the robot asks, “What am I?”

The answer is: the key to solving the mystery of Lanning’s death and a major takeover by the robots, for the NS-5s have an override that allows them to hurt humans (something the First Law of Robotics makes impossible.) The ultimate answer to the mystery I will leave untold but it is far closer to Jack Williamson’s “With Holded Hands” than to anything Isaac Asimov wrote.

Will Smith hates robots.

Is I Robot a good film? Yes, it is on many levels. The world of 2035 is well drawn. The visual graphics are often stunning and well thought out. I had expected the sealed-in world of The Caves of Steel, but the film takes place in a time before the world of Lije Bailey. Added to this visual feast is a police procedural as good as most Hollywood fare. The film keeps you guessing. It also has an emotional level to it in the back-story of why Spooner hates robots and the ultimate fate of Sonny, a robot that dreams. Again, both more Dickian than Asimovian. The film is in some ways a tribute to all the great robot writers, not just the good doctor. In this I think Asimov would have been pleased.

On the negative side, some of the elements of the film are a little too close to other films. The Terminator comparisons are inevitable, though the robots look like a cross between an iMac computer and the Robaxacet puppets. The cars are remonscient of Minority Report and the new Star Wars films. The architecture of the computer called V.I.K.I. is like something from Star Trek Insurrection. For the fan of SF films there are many obvious similarities. My final criterion for this film was: is it a science fiction mystery, a fair one by Asimov’s rules?

I Robot is a good SF mystery. The trail of bread crumbs lead the viewer through twists and turns until the end when the question of who killed Dr. Lanning is finally answered. The big difference between one of Asimov’s mysteries and I Robot is perhaps only the style of mystery. Asimov tended to use the “cosy” style descended from the English writers like Agatha Christie. I Robot is definitely in the American school of Noir. Smith is a policeman, not a private detective, but his cowboy methods make him a loner within the force. This is a mystery with a Raymond Chandler feel rather than Hercule Poirot. And in the best tradition of the Chandler school, if things get slow you can always have a man with a gun – make that a robot – come crashing through a window.

This article first appeared in Cyberpulp Magazine #2