It seems less a story than a sociological meditation. She is Asimov’s nod to feminism and while she is no more than an observer in “Robbie” and sometimes seems a blue-stocking stereotype she does grow and develop as a personality. Both Powell and Donovan are obvious stereotypes. Don’t look for much in the way of characterisation. They are essentially puzzle pieces working on the interplay of the Three Laws. The Powell and Donovan stories are better.

It is definitely the weakest piece in the collection. Supposedly set in the future, it presents a society of the thirties with futuristic gadgets thrown in. The first story, “Robbie” appeared in the September, 1940 issue of “Super Science Stories” under the title, “Strange Playfellow”. When Asimov collected the pieces into a single volume, he created a rather artificial link by presenting them as a reminiscence of Susan Calvin who appears in each. The quality varies but generally improves as the series develops. The tales were written over a ten year period beginning in 1940. I ROBOT is a series of short stories written about robots and centring around Asimov’s “Three Rules of Robotics”. If you are an Isaac Asimov fan looking for a trip down memory lane you will most likely enjoy that aspect but be prepared for a sub-par narrator with terrible character voices. Personally Marc Thompson who narrates a lot of Star Wars books would be FAB. This Audio book needs desperately to be re-recorded by a better Narrator. Every time she 'spoke' I inwardly cringed. However time and again my immersion was broken by the awful narration. However you can suspend disbelief and accept them at face value and as classic piece nostagia.

Sums of money considered to be exorbitant when it was written are peanuts compared to today's. It is very interesting to compare his vision of our future with how it actually turned out. We are past the future dates Isaac Asimov set his stories in. However today,, at a loss for a new book to listen to while doing some DIY, I decided to try again. I have tried many times to listen but gave up time and again. I just could not stand the Narrators strange choice of character voices. I was very excited to get the audio book and settled down to listen. I still have the books that I purchased with my winnings from a school poetry competition. I purchased this audio book way back in September 2019 and today I FINALLY managed to listened to the whole audio book.

I robot by isaac asimov