Artemis
Contains spoilers
This is my favorite book so far. I’m finally reading what I had been hoping to read ever since starting this series: stories of robots as agents with their own agenda, dialogues between two or more robots, and an exploration of how robots actively labored to influence humans. Some of this was already in The Complete Robot, but not all and never this long.
My favorite part about this book is that the robots become the main actors in the story. Not only that, they become those through which the story is told. There is a stunning character development taking place all throughout whereby Daneel and Giskard become close friends by choice and they learn more about the functioning of the human mind that drives the dynamics in human society. All that knowledge drives Giskard to desire a way to determine the future of humanity through a set of laws (which he terms psychohistory), and Daneel to develop the Zeroth Law that supersedes the existing Three Laws.
Next to those character developments, a story plays out in parallel which would explain Earth's radioactivity as exhibited in all of the Galactic Empire books and Foundation and Earth. Mandamus and Amadiro are so evil. So evil. Even if Mandamus could put his goals in the noble way he did, he contributed to the 180° turn of Earth's perception among its residents and in the Galaxy at large. Instead of being this revered, holy place, it becomes a cursed one to the point that by the time Trantor becomes as powerful as it is in Pebble in the Sky, the Empire believes Earthpeople to be a different species altogether! Fuck this duo.
Even though Giskard had done the right thing to save as many lives as possible, he couldn't make it. He managed to – at last – impress the pattern necessary for emotional control onto Daneel. With that he burdened his best friend with the fate of the galaxy for millennia to come. That must be what hell is like. I pity both of them especially, but actually every other robot ever activated in that universe. To be sentenced to eternal enslavement has to be the worst deed ever committed.
Contains spoilers
Another murder mystery that starts out with nearly impossible inputs. Only one person could have done it but they deny having done it, at least they believe so. Since this book was written quite a bit after the first two and the short stories, it tries to tie the whole universe together. The 80s saw Asimov try to connect all of his books to weave a more or less consistent narrative that places all of his stories on a timeline.
Fastolfe sees a series of crises sparked by stagnation on Aurora as well as Earth. He wishes to develop the science psychohistory, but doubts he would ever get there. Maybe Daneel intentionally implants that idea in Hari Seldon's mind later on because he felt humanity's situation to be hopeless and because the idea had gotten to him from Giskard way back when.
Why is the alternative to colonization stagnation? What makes unlimited exploitation justifiable in the face of controlled population growth and plenty of planets that not only cover their needs, but a couple of times more than that? There just isn't. Not even Earth is overpopulated with its eight billions, let alone the Spacer worlds where the largest one has a population of two hundred millions. Nobody needs to settle new planets for any other reason than the glamorization of colonialism.
Auroran customs around sex are weird. It's somehow acceptable for a daughter raised by her father to offer herself to her father who taught her about sex and who is expected to agree to it. Sex is treated like any activity, people respect your privacy in your choices, and they just offer themselves for sex very casually. Some people think sex should be agreed to out of courtesy. As the unwanted product of sex, children are applied for and then they're raised in nurseries away from their parents. There is actually no reason to have children, especially since no connection can be built up. Those who choose to raise their own children are looked down upon.
It's odd how nonchalant Aurorans are with sex and matters of distinction based on gender considering their descendants move on to become the Mycogenians on Trantor who were extremely strict about who speaks with whom and where women were completely sidelined. They looked to be the religious type but acted revolted at the word. Both variations of Aurora are highly opinionated, though.
Similarly, individualism leads these people with longer lives by centuries to choose everything being done by themselves over cooperation. Scientists opt for reinventing the wheel and withholding knowledge for their own gain. It is laudable to invent a theory all by oneself instead of building on contemporary knowledge from others. This is very much in line with how pop culture expects artists to do everything by themselves instead of collaborating.
Phenomenal ending in which Giskard reveals his secret abilities that he acquired by chance. All in all so wholesome to see cooperation between robots and humans and character growth that drives Elijah Baley to accept them as oppressed, perfectly sentient beings that nonetheless do their best for the betterment of humanity.
Contains spoilers
This book gives a glimpse of Solaria in its early days, centuries after its colonization. It's an offshoot of another one of the Outer Worlds and was colonized by Spacers, probably ones who were already rich as hell on their original planets. I say this because their lifestyle is very unique to rich people in that they want everything for themselves, very individualized, and to their comfort. They live alone on their estates with their partners, being served by robots. This is way before the time they become hermaphrodites, so procreation still requires two people, who only interact with each other on "assigned days." While both live on the same estate, they have their own quarters completely separate from each other.
In the end, these books are sociological thought experiments more than anything. What if humanity became so dependent on mechanical slaves and focused on their wellbeing alone? While the The Caves of Steel|former book introduced the reader to a crowded and underground Earth living in fear of the mythological Spacer, the second novel shows us that the mythological Spacers are human after all. Just a very peculiar type.
I found the story took quite a bit of time to pick up some steam – a little more than the average Asimov novel. But eventually it paid off. Elijah came off as the kind of person who jumps at every opportunity for a conclusion and it made him look very desperate. Weird how someone as opportunistic as him, yet very clever indeed, becomes the legendary harbinger of dawn for humanity.
It’s a bit crazy to call Earth overpopulated because eight billion people live on it. Would you argue our Earth is overpopulated without sounding like an ecofascist today? I doubt that. These people’s lifestyle looks to be very stringent, more stringent than ours for sure. They have to maintain the pretense of privacy because there is none since they all live so close by each other. The Cities are homogenous and no City can be easily distinguished from the other.
Their stringent lifestyle doesn’t imply equitability, whatsoever. It’s still a classist society that reserves a little bit of pathetic luxury for the “best”. And again, these books very obviously discuss the human condition more than anything and for that I will always hold them dearly.
This book series and its ending remind me of another series I read at the age of 13-14 by the Austrian author Ursula Poznanski called Eleria in which humanity also makes the planet uninhabitable and lives in so-called spheres that aren’t too different from silos. Lots of effort was put into concealing the reasons behind the uninhabitability of the Earth. Obviously, a reason was given, just not the truth. Were that trilogy not in German, I believe it would’ve blown up just as much as the Silo series.
I love how this book served as a retelling of the first from a different perspective. We kind of got the full story with how Solo was discovered by Jules. We also got some info on how he lived up until he met her. It's like there were two opponents in this entire story: the silo's population and its managers, the silo's managers and their managers, an intruder and the intruded. And the first book only told half the story.
This book feels like a manual for how this world is being run at the moment. The turn of events and the move of rich people clutching their purses evermore so tightly is going to end in a devastating war for which the perpetrators will be well equipped with. And they won’t protect anyone except to further pursue their agenda.
It scares me to think that all we are and all we do is one Nazi project away from being erased.
