Robots and Empire
Encyclopedia
Robots and Empire is science fiction
novel written by the American author Isaac Asimov
and published by Doubleday Books in 1985. It is part of Asimov's Robot series, consisting of many short stories
and novel
s.
Robots and Empire is part of Asimov's consolidation of his two major series of science fiction stories and novels: his Robot Series
and his Foundation Series (the majority part of his Galactic Empire Series
). Asimov also carried out this unification in his novel Foundation's Edge
, and its sequels, thus unifying the two series of fiction into a single future history
.
In these novels Asimov presented the transition from his earlier Milky Way Galaxy, inhabited by both human beings and positronic robots to his Galactic Empire
. The Galaxy of his earlier trilogy of Robot novels is dominated by the human - robotic societies of the 50 "Spacer" planets
, dispersed over a wide part of the Galaxy. The Earth is much more populous than all of the Spacer planets combined, but Earthlings are looked down upon by the Spacers and treated as second-class citizen
s. For a long time the Spacers had forbidden any more emigration of people from the Earth. On the other hand, his much much later Galactic Empire is populated by many quadrillion
s of human beings on hundreds of thousands of habitable planets; and by very, very few robots, such as R. Daneel Olivaw
. Even the technology to maintain and upgrade robots exists only on a few out-of-the way planets. (R. Daneel undergoes some of these upgrades, especially to his positronic brain, over a period of more than 10,000 years.)
, the detective
hero of the previous books, had died nearly two centuries earlier. During these two centuries, the balance of forces in the galaxy had changed dramtically. Inspired partly by Baley's adventures in space, Earth people have overcome their stagnation and agoraphobia
and embarked on the new wave of space colonization, using the faster-than-light drive to reach distant planents throughout the Milky Way Galaxy, beyond the earlier "Spacer" worlds. These new colonized worlds are clearly distinct from the earlier ones, and their inhabitants - calling themselves "Settlers" rather than "Spacers" - revere Earth as their mother-world.
Meanwhile, Baley's memory remains in the mind of his former lover, Gladia Delmarre, a "Spacer"
, who has a centuries-long lifespan as opposed to the seven or eight decades of Earth people such as Baley. It is discovered that Solaria
, the homeworld of Gladia and the 50th of the Spacer planets, had been abandoned and had become empty of all inhabitants, except for the millions of robots which have been left behind. Gladia then meets a seventh-generation-descendant of Baley's, Daneel Giskard (or D.G.) Baley, a Settler trader. He asks for Gladia's help in visiting Solaria in order to unravel the mysterious destruction of several "Settler" spaceship
s making landings there - with the mission of reclaiming the abandoned robots. Gladia agrees to go, and is accompanied by the positronic robots R. Daneel Olivaw
and R. Giskard Reventlov. [R. Giskard has secret telepathic powers about which only R. Daneel knows.] These two robots are both the former property of their creator, Dr. Han Fastolfe, who bequeathed them to Gladia in his will
.
At the same time, Daneel and Giskard are engaged in a struggle of wits with Fastolfe's bitter archrivals, the roboticist
s Kelden Amadiro and Vasilia Aliena - Fastolfe's estranged daughter. Whereas Fastolfe supported the expansion of the "Settler" population from the Earth, Amadiro detests all Settlers - as do most "Spacers", who consider all Earthling
s to be little better than barbarian
s. Amadiro wants to see the Earthlings destroyed, so that the descendants of the Spacers alone can inherit the Milky Way (considering that there are no other intelligent beings in Asimov's fictional galaxy).
However, for many decades Amadiro has been continually thwarted in carrying out the introduction of an anti-Settler policy into the governments of the Spacers. These blockings of Amadiro's plans have been largely caused by the telepathic manipulation of key people by R. Giskard. Frustrated by his series of failures, Amadiro decides to accept an ambitious and unscrupulous apprentice, Levular Mandamus. Mandamus develops a cruel plan to destroy the population of the Earth by using a newly-developed weapon, the "nuclear intensifier". Amadiro and Mandamus intend to kill the population of the Earth and to make the Earth uninhabitable by human beings by using radioactivity. They intend to use the nuclear intensifier device to speed up all of the natural radioactive decay
processes in the upper crust of the Earth, thereby making the surface of the Earth massively radioactive.
[Note that at the time of Asimov's writing, there had been the recent disovery of the W particle, which is the force carrier
of the weak nuclear force. This force is responsible for most forms of nuclear decay: alpha emission and beta emission. The hypothetical "nuclear intensifier" would work by emitting large numbers of W particles, hence expediting nuclear decay.]
In parallel with Amadiro's scheming, R. Daneel and R. Giskard slowly assemble the pieces of the roboticists' genocidal plan for mass murder
. The robots, sharing Fastolfe's humane vision of a unified Settler/Spacer Galaxy - or, failing that, a Galaxy where Settlers can thrive in spite of Spacer domination - attempt to stop Amadiro. However, Daneel and Giskard are hampered by the Three Laws of Robotics
, in particular, by the First Law of Robotics,
which prevents them from making any direct attack on Amadiro. Daneel, meanwhile, has formulated an additional Zeroth Law of Robotics, which he thinks might help them to override the First Law and to save the population of the Earth. The robots must work their way through the ramifications of the First Law and the Zeroth Law in a race against time before they face a confrontation with Amadiro and Mandamus.
Fastolfe's brilliant daughter Vasilia has long coveted the valuable Giskard, and she finally determines to take him away from Gladia. Then, when Vasilia deduces that Giskard has telepathy, she confronts him with this fact. Giskard is compelled to manipulate her mind telepathically in order to make her forget about his telepathic powers. This leaves the two positronic robots free to deal with Amadiro.
The two robots locate Amadiro and Mandamus on Earth, where they find the two Spacers debating the best way to use the nuclear intensifier for their ghoulish purposes. They just happen to be at the site of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania
. After Amadiro admits to the robots their plans to carry out mass murder on the Earth, Giskard decides that it is necessary to tamper with Amadiro's brain (obeying the new Zeroth Law). Unfortunately, the way that Giskard does this causes irreversible damage to Amadiro's brain - and thus harm to him, as is forbidden by the First Law. Giskard is mentally "skating on thin ice" in this regard - and he is not far from suffering the consequences of such action.
Now standing alone with the robots, Mandamus claims that his intentions regarding the nuclear intensifier were more benign than Amadiro's. Mandamus wants to draw out the radioactive catastrophe over many decades, rather than the mere years Amadiro that wanted, so that Amadiro could draw evil pleasure from the destruction of the Earth's population within his own lifetime.
Giskard decides that it would be best for Humanity to abandon the Earth, hence he allows Mandamus to adjust the settings of the nuclear intensifier. He extends the time scale of the radioactive catastrophe to 150 years, allowing humanity to evacuate the Earth (though a significant population still exists at the time of the novel Pebble in the Sky
).
Next, Giskard tampers with Mandamus's mind as well, ensuring that Mandamus will have no memory of what had happened. Giskard predicts, correctly, that by forcing humanity's hand into leaving the Earth, vigor will be reintroduced into Mankind and the new Settlers will spread out across space at a rate never before seen. This will continue until all the governments of the interstellar colonies decide to unite into one "Galactic Empire".
However, by allowing Mandamus to proceed with his original plan, Giskard becomes instrumental in creating a very radioactive planet Earth, and hence placing the inhabitants of Earth under grave threat of death. This contradicts the First Law of Robotics. The Zeroth Law does not prove to be enough, to Giskard at least, to justify harming humans for the sake of a hypothetical future benefit. Under the stress of changing the course of humanity, R. Giskard himself suffers a cascading and soon-fatal malfunction of his positronic brain. This is because he is not sure whether his actions will bring about an ultimate victory for the Spacers, leading to the final death of Humanity.
However before R. Giskard's brain freezes, he confers his telepathic ability upon R. Daneel, and Daneel takes on the heavy burden of guiding the entire burgeoning Galactic civilization.
, he decided to write Robots and Empire with the intentions of making Daneel, "the real hero of the series," the novel's protagonist
; and that Robots and Empire would create a bridge to the later volumes of his future history. About this second aim, Asimov said that he was persuaded against it by Lester del Rey
and Judy-Lynn del Rey
, his long-time friends and the editors
of Del Rey Books
, who thought that the fans of Asimov's series of novels would rather that Asimov kept the Robot and Empire/Foundation universes separate. On the other hand, his editors at Doubleday Books - his hardcover book publisher - encouraged Asimov to do what deep-down he wanted to do. From then on, Asimov proceeded with his plans for unifying the two series..
Asimov wrote Robots and Empire in a nonlinear
fashion (other examples of nonlinear plot-structuring in Asimov's novels can be found in The Gods Themselves
and Nemesis). Flashbacks by the major characters alternate with the present-time storyline. The story starts on the Spacer planet Aurora
, where the heart of Amadiro's conspiracy
against Settler civilization is developing. Meanwhile, aboard a starship
, Gladia, Daneel, and Giskard visit the planets Solaria and Baleyworld before reaching the Earth, where this novel's climax takes place.
Asimov used this planet-hopping itinerary most notably in most of the volumes of the Foundation series from Foundation and Empire
onward. Unlike the detective fiction
methods of the previous Robot novels where Baley assembles the clues to a crime that had been committed, in Robots and Empire, a murderous conspiracy developing against the Earth, and its discovery by the robots, keep pace with each other right up through the final confrontation with Amadiro on the Earth. Then, the robots have only moments to spare in terminating Amadiro's evil plan for a quick death to all Earthlings.
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel written by the American author Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
and published by Doubleday Books in 1985. It is part of Asimov's Robot series, consisting of many short stories
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
and novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s.
Robots and Empire is part of Asimov's consolidation of his two major series of science fiction stories and novels: his Robot Series
Isaac Asimov's Robot Series
Isaac Asimov's Robot Series is a series of short stories and novels by Isaac Asimov featuring positronic robots.- Short stories :Most of Asimov's robot short stories are set in the first age of positronic robotics and space exploration...
and his Foundation Series (the majority part of his Galactic Empire Series
Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire Series
The Galactic Empire Series is a science fiction series containing three novels and one short story by the American author Isaac Asimov...
). Asimov also carried out this unification in his novel Foundation's Edge
Foundation's Edge
Foundation's Edge is a science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov, the fourth book in the Foundation Series. It was written more than thirty years after the stories of the original Foundation trilogy, due to years of pressure by fans and editors on Asimov to write another, and, according to Asimov...
, and its sequels, thus unifying the two series of fiction into a single future history
Future history
A future history is a postulated history of the future and is used by authors in the subgenre of speculative fiction to construct a common background for fiction...
.
In these novels Asimov presented the transition from his earlier Milky Way Galaxy, inhabited by both human beings and positronic robots to his Galactic Empire
Galactic Empire (Asimov)
In Isaac Asimov's Robot/Empire/Foundation series of novels, the Galactic Empire is an empire consisting of millions of planets settled by humans across the whole Milky Way Galaxy. Its symbol is the Spaceship and Sun logo.-Author's creation of the empire:...
. The Galaxy of his earlier trilogy of Robot novels is dominated by the human - robotic societies of the 50 "Spacer" planets
Spacer (Asimov)
In Isaac Asimov's Foundation/Empire/Robot series, the Spacers were the first humans to emigrate to space. About a millennium thereafter, they severed political ties with Earth, and embraced low population growth and extreme longevity as a means for a high standard of living, in combination with...
, dispersed over a wide part of the Galaxy. The Earth is much more populous than all of the Spacer planets combined, but Earthlings are looked down upon by the Spacers and treated as second-class citizen
Second-class citizen
Second-class citizen is an informal term used to describe a person who is systematically discriminated against within a state or other political jurisdiction, despite their nominal status as a citizen or legal resident there...
s. For a long time the Spacers had forbidden any more emigration of people from the Earth. On the other hand, his much much later Galactic Empire is populated by many quadrillion
Quadrillion
Quadrillion may mean either of the two numbers :* 1,000,000,000,000,000 – for all short scale countries; increasingly common meaning in English language usage* 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 – for all...
s of human beings on hundreds of thousands of habitable planets; and by very, very few robots, such as R. Daneel Olivaw
R. Daneel Olivaw
R. Daneel Olivaw is a fictional robot created by Isaac Asimov. The "R" initial in his name stands for "robot," a naming convention in Asimov's future society...
. Even the technology to maintain and upgrade robots exists only on a few out-of-the way planets. (R. Daneel undergoes some of these upgrades, especially to his positronic brain, over a period of more than 10,000 years.)
Plot summary
The Earthman Elijah BaleyElijah Baley
Elijah Baley is a fictional character in Isaac Asimov's Robot series. He is the main character of the novels The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn, and of the short story "Mirror Image". He is seen in flashbacks several times and talked about frequently in Robots and Empire,...
, the detective
Detective
A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
hero of the previous books, had died nearly two centuries earlier. During these two centuries, the balance of forces in the galaxy had changed dramtically. Inspired partly by Baley's adventures in space, Earth people have overcome their stagnation and agoraphobia
Agoraphobia
Agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder defined as a morbid fear of having a panic attack or panic-like symptoms in a situation from which it is perceived to be difficult to escape. These situations can include, but are not limited to, wide-open spaces, crowds, or uncontrolled social conditions...
and embarked on the new wave of space colonization, using the faster-than-light drive to reach distant planents throughout the Milky Way Galaxy, beyond the earlier "Spacer" worlds. These new colonized worlds are clearly distinct from the earlier ones, and their inhabitants - calling themselves "Settlers" rather than "Spacers" - revere Earth as their mother-world.
Meanwhile, Baley's memory remains in the mind of his former lover, Gladia Delmarre, a "Spacer"
Spacer (Asimov)
In Isaac Asimov's Foundation/Empire/Robot series, the Spacers were the first humans to emigrate to space. About a millennium thereafter, they severed political ties with Earth, and embraced low population growth and extreme longevity as a means for a high standard of living, in combination with...
, who has a centuries-long lifespan as opposed to the seven or eight decades of Earth people such as Baley. It is discovered that Solaria
Solaria
Solaria was a fictional human-inhabited planet in Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Robot series.It was the last of fifty Spacer worlds colonized by humans in a first wave of interstellar settlement. Occupied from approximately 4270 AD by inhabitants of the neighboring world Nexon originally for summer...
, the homeworld of Gladia and the 50th of the Spacer planets, had been abandoned and had become empty of all inhabitants, except for the millions of robots which have been left behind. Gladia then meets a seventh-generation-descendant of Baley's, Daneel Giskard (or D.G.) Baley, a Settler trader. He asks for Gladia's help in visiting Solaria in order to unravel the mysterious destruction of several "Settler" spaceship
Spacecraft
A spacecraft or spaceship is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, planetary exploration and transportation of humans and cargo....
s making landings there - with the mission of reclaiming the abandoned robots. Gladia agrees to go, and is accompanied by the positronic robots R. Daneel Olivaw
R. Daneel Olivaw
R. Daneel Olivaw is a fictional robot created by Isaac Asimov. The "R" initial in his name stands for "robot," a naming convention in Asimov's future society...
and R. Giskard Reventlov. [R. Giskard has secret telepathic powers about which only R. Daneel knows.] These two robots are both the former property of their creator, Dr. Han Fastolfe, who bequeathed them to Gladia in his will
Will (law)
A will or testament is a legal declaration by which a person, the testator, names one or more persons to manage his/her estate and provides for the transfer of his/her property at death...
.
At the same time, Daneel and Giskard are engaged in a struggle of wits with Fastolfe's bitter archrivals, the roboticist
Roboticist
A roboticist designs, builds, programs, and experiments with robots. Since robotics is a highly interdisciplinary field, roboticists often have backgrounds in a number of disciplines including computer science, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer engineering...
s Kelden Amadiro and Vasilia Aliena - Fastolfe's estranged daughter. Whereas Fastolfe supported the expansion of the "Settler" population from the Earth, Amadiro detests all Settlers - as do most "Spacers", who consider all Earthling
Earthling
Earthling is a term commonly used in science fiction to identify humans as opposed to extraterrestrials. The literary effect aimed for is a distancing effect, inviting the readers to contemplate their own species as it might be seen from an external point of view...
s to be little better than barbarian
Barbarian
Barbarian and savage are terms used to refer to a person who is perceived to be uncivilized. The word is often used either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos, typically a tribal society as seen by an urban civilization either viewed as inferior, or admired as a noble savage...
s. Amadiro wants to see the Earthlings destroyed, so that the descendants of the Spacers alone can inherit the Milky Way (considering that there are no other intelligent beings in Asimov's fictional galaxy).
However, for many decades Amadiro has been continually thwarted in carrying out the introduction of an anti-Settler policy into the governments of the Spacers. These blockings of Amadiro's plans have been largely caused by the telepathic manipulation of key people by R. Giskard. Frustrated by his series of failures, Amadiro decides to accept an ambitious and unscrupulous apprentice, Levular Mandamus. Mandamus develops a cruel plan to destroy the population of the Earth by using a newly-developed weapon, the "nuclear intensifier". Amadiro and Mandamus intend to kill the population of the Earth and to make the Earth uninhabitable by human beings by using radioactivity. They intend to use the nuclear intensifier device to speed up all of the natural radioactive decay
Radioactive decay
Radioactive decay is the process by which an atomic nucleus of an unstable atom loses energy by emitting ionizing particles . The emission is spontaneous, in that the atom decays without any physical interaction with another particle from outside the atom...
processes in the upper crust of the Earth, thereby making the surface of the Earth massively radioactive.
[Note that at the time of Asimov's writing, there had been the recent disovery of the W particle, which is the force carrier
Force carrier
In particle physics, quantum field theories such as the Standard Model describe nature in terms of fields. Each field has a complementary description as the set of particles of a particular type...
of the weak nuclear force. This force is responsible for most forms of nuclear decay: alpha emission and beta emission. The hypothetical "nuclear intensifier" would work by emitting large numbers of W particles, hence expediting nuclear decay.]
In parallel with Amadiro's scheming, R. Daneel and R. Giskard slowly assemble the pieces of the roboticists' genocidal plan for mass murder
Mass murder
Mass murder is the act of murdering a large number of people , typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders...
. The robots, sharing Fastolfe's humane vision of a unified Settler/Spacer Galaxy - or, failing that, a Galaxy where Settlers can thrive in spite of Spacer domination - attempt to stop Amadiro. However, Daneel and Giskard are hampered by the Three Laws of Robotics
Three Laws of Robotics
The Three Laws of Robotics are a set of rules devised by the science fiction author Isaac Asimov and later added to. The rules are introduced in his 1942 short story "Runaround", although they were foreshadowed in a few earlier stories...
, in particular, by the First Law of Robotics,
which prevents them from making any direct attack on Amadiro. Daneel, meanwhile, has formulated an additional Zeroth Law of Robotics, which he thinks might help them to override the First Law and to save the population of the Earth. The robots must work their way through the ramifications of the First Law and the Zeroth Law in a race against time before they face a confrontation with Amadiro and Mandamus.
Fastolfe's brilliant daughter Vasilia has long coveted the valuable Giskard, and she finally determines to take him away from Gladia. Then, when Vasilia deduces that Giskard has telepathy, she confronts him with this fact. Giskard is compelled to manipulate her mind telepathically in order to make her forget about his telepathic powers. This leaves the two positronic robots free to deal with Amadiro.
The two robots locate Amadiro and Mandamus on Earth, where they find the two Spacers debating the best way to use the nuclear intensifier for their ghoulish purposes. They just happen to be at the site of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
. After Amadiro admits to the robots their plans to carry out mass murder on the Earth, Giskard decides that it is necessary to tamper with Amadiro's brain (obeying the new Zeroth Law). Unfortunately, the way that Giskard does this causes irreversible damage to Amadiro's brain - and thus harm to him, as is forbidden by the First Law. Giskard is mentally "skating on thin ice" in this regard - and he is not far from suffering the consequences of such action.
Now standing alone with the robots, Mandamus claims that his intentions regarding the nuclear intensifier were more benign than Amadiro's. Mandamus wants to draw out the radioactive catastrophe over many decades, rather than the mere years Amadiro that wanted, so that Amadiro could draw evil pleasure from the destruction of the Earth's population within his own lifetime.
Giskard decides that it would be best for Humanity to abandon the Earth, hence he allows Mandamus to adjust the settings of the nuclear intensifier. He extends the time scale of the radioactive catastrophe to 150 years, allowing humanity to evacuate the Earth (though a significant population still exists at the time of the novel Pebble in the Sky
Pebble in the Sky
Pebble in the Sky is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, published in 1950. This work is his first novel — parts of the Foundation series had appeared from 1942 onwards, in magazines, but Foundation was not published in book form until 1951...
).
Next, Giskard tampers with Mandamus's mind as well, ensuring that Mandamus will have no memory of what had happened. Giskard predicts, correctly, that by forcing humanity's hand into leaving the Earth, vigor will be reintroduced into Mankind and the new Settlers will spread out across space at a rate never before seen. This will continue until all the governments of the interstellar colonies decide to unite into one "Galactic Empire".
However, by allowing Mandamus to proceed with his original plan, Giskard becomes instrumental in creating a very radioactive planet Earth, and hence placing the inhabitants of Earth under grave threat of death. This contradicts the First Law of Robotics. The Zeroth Law does not prove to be enough, to Giskard at least, to justify harming humans for the sake of a hypothetical future benefit. Under the stress of changing the course of humanity, R. Giskard himself suffers a cascading and soon-fatal malfunction of his positronic brain. This is because he is not sure whether his actions will bring about an ultimate victory for the Spacers, leading to the final death of Humanity.
However before R. Giskard's brain freezes, he confers his telepathic ability upon R. Daneel, and Daneel takes on the heavy burden of guiding the entire burgeoning Galactic civilization.
Novel
In his memoir I. Asimov (1994), Asimov explained that following his commercial and critical success with The Robots of DawnThe Robots of Dawn
The Robots of Dawn is a "whodunit" science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov, first published in 1983. It is the third novel in Asimov's Robot series.It was nominated for both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1984.- Plot summary :...
, he decided to write Robots and Empire with the intentions of making Daneel, "the real hero of the series," the novel's protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
; and that Robots and Empire would create a bridge to the later volumes of his future history. About this second aim, Asimov said that he was persuaded against it by Lester del Rey
Lester del Rey
Lester del Rey was an American science fiction author and editor. Del Rey was the author of many of the Winston Science Fiction juvenile SF series, and the editor at Del Rey Books, the fantasy and science fiction branch of Ballantine Books, along with his fourth wife Judy-Lynn del Rey.-Birth...
and Judy-Lynn del Rey
Judy-Lynn del Rey
Judy-Lynn del Rey née Benjamin was a science fiction editor.Born with dwarfism, she was a fan and regular attendee at science fiction conventions and worked her way up the publishing ladder, starting with work at the science fiction magazine Galaxy.Judy-Lynn was friends with Lester del Rey and...
, his long-time friends and the editors
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
of Del Rey Books
Del Rey Books
Del Rey Books is a branch of Ballantine Books, which is owned by Random House and, in turn since 1998, by Bertelsmann AG. It is a separate imprint established in 1977 under the editorship of author Lester del Rey and his wife Judy-Lynn del Rey. It specializes in science fiction and fantasy...
, who thought that the fans of Asimov's series of novels would rather that Asimov kept the Robot and Empire/Foundation universes separate. On the other hand, his editors at Doubleday Books - his hardcover book publisher - encouraged Asimov to do what deep-down he wanted to do. From then on, Asimov proceeded with his plans for unifying the two series..
Asimov wrote Robots and Empire in a nonlinear
Nonlinear (arts)
Nonlinear narrative, disjointed narrative or disrupted narrative is a narrative technique, sometimes used in literature, film, hypertext websites and other narratives, wherein events are portrayed out of chronological order...
fashion (other examples of nonlinear plot-structuring in Asimov's novels can be found in The Gods Themselves
The Gods Themselves
The Gods Themselves is a 1972 science fiction novel written by Isaac Asimov. It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973....
and Nemesis). Flashbacks by the major characters alternate with the present-time storyline. The story starts on the Spacer planet Aurora
Aurora (planet)
Aurora is a fictional planet in Isaac Asimov's Robot Series. It was the first world settled by the Spacers, originally named 'New Earth'; it was located 3.7 parsecs from Earth.-Origins & development:...
, where the heart of Amadiro's conspiracy
Conspiracy (crime)
In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement...
against Settler civilization is developing. Meanwhile, aboard a starship
Starship
A starship or interstellar spacecraft is a theoretical spacecraft designed for traveling between the stars, as opposed to a vehicle designed for orbital spaceflight or interplanetary travel....
, Gladia, Daneel, and Giskard visit the planets Solaria and Baleyworld before reaching the Earth, where this novel's climax takes place.
Asimov used this planet-hopping itinerary most notably in most of the volumes of the Foundation series from Foundation and Empire
Foundation and Empire
Foundation and Empire is a novel written by Isaac Asimov that was published by Gnome Press in 1952. It is the second book published in the Foundation Series, and the fourth in the in-universe chronology...
onward. Unlike the detective fiction
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
methods of the previous Robot novels where Baley assembles the clues to a crime that had been committed, in Robots and Empire, a murderous conspiracy developing against the Earth, and its discovery by the robots, keep pace with each other right up through the final confrontation with Amadiro on the Earth. Then, the robots have only moments to spare in terminating Amadiro's evil plan for a quick death to all Earthlings.
External links
- Robots and Empire at Worlds Without End