I, Robot: To Preserve by Mickey Zucker Reichert

Back in February, fantasy author Mickey Zucker Reichert published the third book in her I, Robot prequel trilogy, I, Robot: To Preserve. The books turned out to be not so much a prequel as a reboot of Isaac Asimov's positronic robot series. As I noted in my review of the first book, I, Robot: To Protect, Reichert shifted the time frame of Asimov's original stories by 27 years, so that Susan Calvin's birth takes place in 2009 rather than 1982. This allows Reichert to set her trilogy in our own future rather than in an alternate present, since under Asimov's original chronology To Protect would have taken place in the year 2008.

I liked To Protect. Despite the changes Reichert made to Susan Calvin and to the background of the positronic robot series, she maintained Asimov's focus on the interplay between the robots who obey the Three Laws of Robotics and a human race that has no built-in laws of behavior. Unfortunately, in her second book, I, Robot: To Obey, Reichert shifted the focus away from the Three Laws so that she could write a violent, action-packed thriller centered on a ridiculous MacGuffin. The final book, sadly, continues the tradition established in the second book. Reichert presents us with another violent, action-packed thriller with a seriously unlikely plot.

In the second book, Susan Calvin, second-year psychiatry resident at a Manhattan teaching hospital, suddenly found herself caught between two equally murderous groups: an anti-robot movement called the Society for Humanity, and a hit squad from a military intelligence agency code-named Cadmium. Both groups believed, for no good reason, that Calvin knew a cheat code that would switch off the Three Laws, allowing positronic robots to be turned into unstoppable killing machines. The Society wanted to kill Calvin to keep the cheat code secret, and Cadmium wanted to kidnap Calvin and torture the cheat code out of her so they could weaponize their own positronic robots. The novel ended with a New York cop named Jake Carson thwarting both groups and saving Calvin's life.

As the third novel opens, Cadmium has come up with a new plan to gain the cheat code from Calvin, a plan that is both murderous and needlessly convoluted. Step one of the plan is to murder a brilliant medical researcher that Calvin has worked with, and make it look like the Society was responsible. In order to give an apparent motive for the Society to commit the murder, Cadmium made it look like the Society made it look like the murder was committed by Nate, an android from US Robots who works at the hospital. Unfortunately for Cadmium, the police are too obtuse to notice the clues they planted that point to the Society as the real culprits. Instead, the police arrest Nate for the murder, then arrest Nate's creator, Dr. Lawrence Robertson, the president of US Robots.

Step two of Cadmium's plan is to stage an attack on Calvin while she's walking through Central Park, and have one of their agents save her from the supposed attackers. Calvin believes that the attackers are working for the Society, and that her savior is a recently-discharged Marine named Pal Buffoni. Buffoni is a handsome devil, and it isn't long before he is able to seduce Calvin, winning both her trust and her love. The staged attack occurs shortly after Calvin has stolen Nate from the police, and Buffoni helps Calvin hide Nate in her apartment. Carson, the cop who saved Calvin a year earlier, then shows up at her door looking for Nate, since he has just been assigned to recover the android. Calvin and Buffoni disguise Nate and send Carson on his way.

Step three of Cadmium's plan is to stage another attack on Calvin, this time making sure to kill her closest friend. Buffoni then pressures her to try to figure out what the cheat code is, even though she has assured him that there is no cheat code. Carson reappears, and is able to surreptitiously inform Calvin that Cadmium has been behind all the attacks. Calvin pretends to work out the cheat code while luring Buffoni into a trap, and Carson is again able to save her.

Logically, there was no reason for Cadmium to commit the first murder and try to frame the Society for it. The first staged attack on Calvin in Central Park accomplished everything they wanted to accomplish: convince her that her life was threatened, and make her reliant on Buffoni for her protection. For that matter, there was no logical reason for the second staged attack. Calvin was already in love with Buffoni, and ready to follow his lead. The murder and the second attack occur because Reichert needs them, not because Cadmium needs them. The murder leads Calvin to quit her job at the hospital and go to work for US Robots, which is where Reichert needs her to be at the end of the novel to set up the stories in Asimov's original I, Robot. The second attack allows Carson to figure out that Cadmium is behind everything, so he can save Calvin again.

To sum up: Reichert's prequel trilogy made a very promising start, then suddenly veered into poorly-plotted mayhem. Was it her plan all along to make the prequels such a jarring departure from Asimov's original, or did she run out of inspiration after the first book and settle for writing a couple of violent thrillers? The whole cheat code MacGuffin derailed the trilogy to no purpose, since the hypothetical existence of a cheat code is never mentioned in any chronologically subsequent story.

I suppose if you squint hard enough, the prequels sort of look like the Elijah Baley novels (except much more violent and poorly plotted), so maybe that was what Reichert was aiming at. If so, I can't help wishing that she had tried to imitate the cerebral tone of Asimov's robot novels (and of the original I, Robot collection, for that matter), and not just the murder-takes-place-and-protagonist-solves-it plot structure.

Road to Nowhere

Yesterday, I blogged about the planet Trantor from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, and noted that my friend Christina is right when she points out how terribly underpopulated it is for a supposedly planet-wide urban area.

One issue that Christina doesn't mention, and Asimov didn't either, is the question of just how the people on Trantor found their way around the place. Trantor is supposedly a single city with an area of 75,000,000 square miles. Let's say you're a tourist visiting the planet. Like Gaal Dornick, you can take a taxi from the spaceport to the nearest hotel and book a room. And then?

Asimov never showed any of his characters trying to find their way around the planet. Dornick didn't have to bother, because he was escorted everywhere on the planet by government agents, or by Hari Seldon. When Lathan Devers and Ducem Barr visited the planet two centuries later, we never saw them navigating the world. We just cut from the two of them standing in a terrace outside the spaceport to the two of them meeting with a bureaucrat in his office. Then, after the bureaucrat tries to arrest them and Devers kills him, we cut again to the two men back in the spaceport hanger where their ship is docked. And so they leave Trantor. Finally, there is Asimov's 1988 penultimate Foundation novel, Prelude to Foundation, in which Hari Seldon visits Trantor for the first time, and ends up settling there. At one point early in the novel, Seldon finds himself sitting in a park, but Asimov never indicates how he made his way there. Other than that, Seldon, like Gaal Dornick, is escorted everywhere on Trantor by various people who know where they're going and how to get there.

This is not to say that nobody has considered the question of how to navigate a planet-wide city. In Harry Harrison's 1965 novel Bill, the Galactic Hero, the title character visits a Trantor-like planet-city called Helior. Bill makes his way through Helior by carrying a street atlas the size of a Gutenberg Bible. Bad things happen to Bill when he nods off and his atlas is stolen, leaving him lost and incapable of making his way back to his barracks. Donald Kingsbury's 2001 novel Psychohistorical Crisis is an Asimov pastiche set after the formation of the Second Galactic Empire. The Second Empire's citizens use symbiotic computers to augment their memories, allowing them to access built-in GPS systems to guide them around the world-city of Splendid Wisdom. One character who has had his symbiotic computer destroyed is able to manage by using an old-fashioned Google glass-type device to project navigational information onto his retina.

A latter-day Asimov writing a story set on Trantor would probably have his characters use smartphones with GPS aps to find their way around, just as people today use them to find their way around unfamiliar places. It's a pity; I'm going to miss those massive street atlases from Bill, the Galactic Hero.

And, hey, as long as we're on the subject, here's the Talking Heads with "Road to Nowhere".

Population Implosion

Last week, my friend Christina was pondering the planet Trantor from Asimov's Foundation series. She quoted the Encyclopedia Galactica article that heads section 3 of "The Psychohistorians": "All the land surface of Trantor, 75,000,000 square miles in extent, was a single city. The population, at its height, was well in excess of forty billions." The figure of forty billion for the population of Trantor is repeated several times in the original trilogy, except once, in chapter 18 of Second Foundation, where it's given as 400 billion (undoubtedly due to a brain fart by Asimov).

Christina then calculates that the population density of Trantor was 533 people per square mile. By way of contrast, here are the population densities of some modern American cities:

• New York City - 27,016.3
• San Francisco - 17,246.4
• Boston -13,321.0
• Chicago - 11,868.0
• Philadelphia - 11,233.6

If you want a population density around 533 per square mile, you have to look to a place like Mattawan, Michigan (524.1). In other words, Trantor's population density makes it sound like a world covered with small towns. But of course, that's not how Asimov describes it. When Gaal Dornick takes an elevator up to an open terrace at the top of a tower,

He could not see the ground. It was lost in the ever increasing complexities of man-made structures. He could see no horizon other than that of metal against sky, stretching out to almost uniform grayness, and he knew it was so over all the land-surface of the planet.

As Christina points out, if Trantor had a population density like that of, say, Tokyo proper, with 38,312 people per square mile, you would get a planetary population of 2.9 trillion people.

What we have here, then, as Christina says, is a massive failure of scale on Asimov's part. We can even pinpoint where and when it took place. The first mention of Trantor's population to appear in print was in "Dead Hand" in the April 1945 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction. Asimov wrote the story in an apartment house in Philadelphia in the summer of 1944. And he had to write in his spare time, since he had a full-time 53-hour-per-week job at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. In the story, Lathan Devers, a trader from the Foundation, is traveling to Trantor. Here is Asimov's description:

The entire world was one fuctional distortion. There was no living object on its surface but man, his pets, and his parasites. No blade of grass or fragment of uncovered soil could be found outside the hundred square miles of the Imperial Palace. No fresh water outside the Palace grounds existed but in the vast underground cisterns that held the water supply of a world.

The lustrous, indestructible, incorruptible metal that was the unbroken surface of the planet was the foundation of the huge, metal structures that mazed the planet. They were structures connected by causeways; laced by corridors; cubbyholed by offices; basemented by the huge retail centers that covered square miles; penthoused by the glittering amusement world that sparkled into life each night.

One could walk around the world of Trantor and never leave that one conglomerate building, nor see the city.

A fleet of ships greater in number than all the war fleets the Empire had ever supported landed their cargoes on Trantor each day to feed the forty billions of humans who gave nothing in exchange but the fulfillment of the necessity of untangling the myriads of threads that spiraled into the central administration of the most complex government Humanity had ever known.

Twenty agricultural worlds were the granary of Trantor. A universe was its servant --

So, Asimov most likely plucked the figure of forty billion out of his head while writing these paragraphs without ever trying to work out just how many people would actually be living on a world covered by a single vast city. And once the forty billion figure was set down in print, he kept repeating it in later stories (except, as noted above, when he got it wrong in the last story of the trilogy, "--And Now You Don't").

I Robot: To Obey by Mickey Zucker Reichert

Six years ago, Susan Allison, editorial director of the Penguin Group imprint Berkeley Books, announced that the estate of Isaac Asimov had authorized Berkeley to publish a prequel trilogy to Asimov's classic I, Robot story collection by fantasy author Mickey Zucker Reichert. The announcement stated that the first book in the trilogy, tentatively titled Robots and Chaos, was due to be delivered by Reichert late the following year. The book was finally published by Penguin's ROC imprint in November 2011 under the title I, Robot: To Protect. I posted a review of the book on February 13, 2012, three months after publication, because it took me that long to find the time to read it and write a review.

I liked To Protect. Despite numerous changes to the background established by Asimov in the original collection, Reichert stayed true to Asimov's theme of how the Three Laws of Robotics would operate in a world where robots were constrained by a built-in set of moral precepts, but their human creators were not. Reichert introduced Susan Calvin, a first-year psychiatry resident at a teaching hospital in Manhattan, and the daughter of noted roboticist John Calvin. The story followed Calvin as she dealt with various medical cases; befriended Nate, an android built by her father; and uncovered a terrorist plot by a group of anti-robot fanatics.

The second book in the trilogy, I, Robot: To Obey, was published by ROC in September 2013. It is a mark of how hectic my life has become that I am only now getting around to writing a review of it. Sadly, it wasn't worth the wait. Reichert more or less abandons her examination of the Three Laws in To Obey in order to write a MacGuffin-driven thriller. And the worst thing is, it's a completely senseless MacGuffin. In order to demonstrate how senseless, I'm going to have to spoil the novel's plot. It's okay, though, because the plot deserves spoiling.

When Susan Calvin comes home one day to discover that her father has been killed and decapitated (not necessarily in that order), she is plunged into a harrowing ordeal in which no less than two ruthless groups are determined to kidnap and/or kill her: the first is the group of anti-robot terrorists from the first novel, and the second is some sort of hit team from the Department of Defense. Both groups believe for no good reason that her parents designed an off switch for the Three Laws of Robotics. Anyone who knows a particular code phrase can recite it, and any positronic robots within hearing will have their Three Laws switched off, allowing them to be used as merciless killing machines. Even though Susan's parents always insisted that the Three Laws were intrinsic to the positronic brain, the terrorists and the DoD hit team both believe that they were lying, that John Calvin knew the switch-off code, and that he taught it to Susan. After her father's death, Susan discovers that he left her a secret message encoded in a pair of smartphone-type devices: apparently there was a switch-off code after all, and Susan has to spend most of the novel risking her life in order to retrieve it. When she does retrieve the smartphones and decode the secret message, it says . . .

 . . . that there is no switch-off code, and never has been.

So . . . if there never was any switch-off code, then why the hell did John Calvin bother with his stupid fucking secret message? It was the existence of the secret message that convinced everybody that there really was a switch-off code, and Susan Calvin nearly died SEVERAL TIMES trying to retrieve it. It was the secret message that drove the novel's plot, and there was no need for a secret message BECAUSE THERE WAS NO SWITCH-OFF CODE.

There's some other stuff going on in To Obey, professional trouble and romantic trouble for Susan Calvin, but it all pales in comparison to the gratuitous MacGuffin plot. I'm frankly wary about what Reichert is going to do in the last book of the trilogy, which will be called I, Robot: To Preserve, and which is due out next February. Maybe she'll go back to focusing on the Three Laws. Maybe.

I, Robot: To Protect by Mickey Zucker Reichert

November 2011 saw the publication of I, Robot: To Protect by Mickey Zucker Reichert, the first addition to Isaac Asimov's positronic robot series since the publication of Alexander C. Irvine's Have Robot, Will Travel in 2004, and also the first novel in a projected trilogy. When the books were first announced in 2009, they were described as a prequel trilogy to Asimov's original story collection, I, Robot, centered on the early life of Dr. Susan Calvin, the collection's central character.

Having just finished I, Robot: To Protect, I think it would be more accurate to describe this as a reboot rather than a prequel. In the introduction to I, Robot, Asimov gave some of the details of Susan Calvin's curriculum vitae: born in 1982, received a bachelor's degree from Columbia in 2003 and began graduate work in cybernetics, received a Ph.D. in 2008 and joined United States Robots as a robopsychologist. In other words, Calvin was a roboticist who became interested in robotic psychology.

In Reichert's novel, Calvin is a medical doctor specializing in psychiatry who becomes involved in a project to use nanorobots for psychiatric diagnoses, and who also befriends Nate, an android with a positronic brain. In other words, Calvin is a psychiatrist who becomes interested in robotic psychology. Changing Calvin from an engineer to a medical doctor allows Reichert to make use of her own background as a medical doctor, giving the novel a hefty helping of verisimilitude.

As I've noted elsewhere, Reichert also pushes Calvin's date of birth forward from 1982 to 2009. She pretty much had to do this, because if she had stuck to Asimov's original timeline, she would have wound up writing an alternate history novel set in an alternate 2008, rather than a science fiction novel set in the future.

Despite the updating of the story milieu and the change in Calvin's profession, Reichert maintains thematic continuity with Asimov's original positronic robot stories by focusing on the Three Laws of Robotics. The Three Laws were arguably Asimov's major contribution to science fiction. (He once predicted that after everything else he did was forgotten, the Three Laws would still be remembered.) By giving his robots a built-in moral sense, Asimov helped to illustrate the sources of human morality, because once you conceive of a being with an innate set of moral standards, it highlights the way that humans acquire (and, sadly, fail to acquire) their own moral standards.

Reichert is a veteran fantasy writer who has been publishing professionally for over twenty years, so she knows how to write readable prose, and proves it here. More than that, though, along with the story's plot involving doctors, mental patients, and terrorists, Reichert looks at how people react when they find themselves sharing their world with innately moral beings: beings who can think and feel as well as humans do, but who are primarily forbidden to injure humans or allow humans to be injured; who are secondarily required to obey humans; and who are only tertiarily required to protect themselves.

The second volume in the trilogy will presumably be called I, Robot: To Obey. I can hardly wait.

Robot/Foundation Publication History

Following up on the Insanely Complete Robot/Foundation Fiction List, and at the request of my email correspondent Jim Syler, I now present the components of Asimov's future history re-arranged in order of original publication. In the case of short stories, I'm including the name of the book or magazine where they were first published. In the case of works with multiple titles, I'll be listing the original publication title first, followed by subsequent retitlings.

"Strange Playfellow/Robbie": September 1940, Super Science Stories

"Reason": April 1941, Astounding Science-Fiction

"Liar!": May 1941, Astounding Science-Fiction

"Robot AL-76 Goes Astray": February 1942, Amazing Stories

"Runaround": March 1942, Astounding Science-Fiction

"Foundation/The Encyclopedists": May 1942, Astounding Science-Fiction

"Bridle and Saddle/The Mayors": June 1942, Astounding Science-Fiction

"Catch That Rabbit": February 1944, Astounding Science-Fiction

"The Big and the Little/The Merchant Princes": August 1944, Astounding Science-Fiction

"The Wedge/The Traders": October 1944, Astounding Science-Fiction

"Blind Alley": March 1945, Astounding Science-Fiction

"Dead Hand/The General": April 1945, Astounding Science-Fiction

"Paradoxical Escape/Escape": August 1945, Astounding Science-Fiction

"The Mule": November/December 1945, Astounding Science-Fiction

"Evidence": September 1946, Astounding Science-Fiction

"Little Lost Robot": March 1947, Astounding Science-Fiction

"Now You See It--/Search By the Mule": January 1948, Astounding Science-Fiction

"Mother Earth": May 1949, Astounding Science-Fiction

"--And Now You Don't/Search By the Foundation": November/December 1949/January 1950, Astounding Science-Fiction

Pebble in the Sky: January 1950

"The Evitable Conflict": June 1950, Astounding Science-Fiction

I, Robot: December 1950

"Satisfaction Guaranteed": January 1951, Super Science Stories

Tyrann/The Stars, Like Dust: January/February/March 1951, Galaxy Magazine

"The Psychohistorians": September 1951, Foundation

The Currents of Space: October/November/December 1952, Astounding Science Fiction

The Caves of Steel: October/November/December 1953, Galaxy Magazine

"Risk": May 1955, Astounding Science Fiction

"First Law": October 1956, Fantastic Universe

The Naked Sun: October/November/December 1956, Astounding Science Fiction

"Insert Knob A in Hole B": December 1957, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

"Galley Slave": December 1957, Galaxy Science Fiction

"Lenny": January 1958, Infinity Science Fiction

"Feminine Intuition": October 1969, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

"Mirror Image": May 1972, Analog Science Fiction and Fact

"Light Verse": September-October 1973, The Saturday Evening Post

"...That Thou Art Mindful of Him": May 1974, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

"A Boy's Best Friend": March 1975, Boy's Life

"The Bicentennial Man": February 1976, Stellar-2

Foundation's Edge: June 1982

The Robots of Dawn: October 1983

Robots and Empire: September 1985

Foundation and Earth: October 1986

"Robot Dreams": November 1986, Robot Dreams

Robot City: Odyssey by Michael P. Kube-McDowell: July 1987

Robot City: Suspicion by Mike McQuay: September 1987

Robot City: Cyborg by William F. Wu: November 1987

Robot City: Prodigy by Arthur Byron Cover: January 1988

Robot City: Refuge by Rob Chilson: March 1988

Robot City: Perihelion by William F. Wu: June 1988

Prelude to Foundation: November 1988

"Christmas Without Rodney": December 1988, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine

Robots and Aliens: Changeling by Stephen Leigh: August 1989

"Strip Runner" by Pamela Sargent: September 1989, Foundation's Friends

"Trantor Falls" by Harry Turtledove: September 1989, Foundation's Friends

"Balance" by Mike Resnick: September 1989, Foundation's Friends

"PAPPI" by Sheila Finch: September 1989, Foundation's Friends

"Plato's Cave" by Poul Anderson: September 1989, Foundation's Friends

"Foundation's Conscience" by George Zebrowski: September 1989, Foundation's Friends

"Carhunters of the Concrete Prairie" by Robert Sheckley: September 1989, Foundation's Friends

"Blot" by Hal Clement: September 1989, Foundation's Friends

"The Fourth Law of Robotics" by Harry Harrison: September 1989, Foundation's Friends

"The Originist" by Orson Scott Card: September 1989, Foundation's Friends

Robots and Aliens: Renegade by Cordell Scotten: November 1989

"Too Bad!": November 1989, The Microverse

"Cal": 1990, Cal

Robots and Aliens: Intruder by Robert Thurston: February 1990

Robots and Aliens: Alliance by Jerry Oltion: May 1990

Robots and Aliens: Maverick by Bruce Bethke: August 1990

Robots and Aliens: Humanity by Jerry Oltion: November 1990

"Kid Brother": Mid-December 1990, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine

"Forward the Foundation/Eto Demerzel": November 1991, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine

"Cleon the Emperor/Cleon I": April 1992, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine

Caliban by Roger MacBride Allen: March 1993

"The Consort/Dors Venabili": April 1993, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine

"Wanda Seldon": April 1993, Forward the Foundation

"Epilogue": April 1993, Forward the Foundation

Robots in Time: Predator by William F. Wu: April 1993

Robots in Time: Marauder by William F. Wu: July 1993

The Positronic Man by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg: September 1993

Robots in Time: Warrior by William F. Wu: October 1993

Robots in Time: Dictator by William F. Wu: February 1994

Robots in Time: Emperor by William F. Wu: June 1994

Robots in Time: Invader by William F. Wu: September 1994

Inferno by Roger MacBride Allen: October 1994

Utopia by Roger MacBride Allen: November 1996

Foundation's Fear by Gregory Benford: February 1997

Foundation and Chaos by Greg Bear: February 1998

Foundation's Triumph by David Brin: May 1999

Mirage by Mark W. Tiedemann: April 2000

Chimera by Mark W. Tiedemann: April 2001

Aurora by Mark W. Tiedemann: April 2002

Have Robot, Will Travel by Alexander C. Irvine: May 2005

I, Robot: To Protect by Mickey Zucker Reichert: November 2011

I, Robot: To Obey by Mickey Zucker Reichert: September 2013

The Insanely Complete Robot/Foundation Fiction List

As I've noted before, my major claim to fame on the internet is a list of all the stories in Isaac Asimov's positronic robot/Foundation timeline (both by Asimov himself and by other writers) that I first posted on Usenet back in 1998, and which was picked up by Ed Seiler for his Isaac Asimov Home Page. Oddly, though, I've never posted the list here on my own blog. Until now.

The impetus for this monumental undertaking is twofold: first, an email from an Asimov fan named Jim Syler asking about the date of "Satisfaction Guaranteed", and second, the recent publication of the first of Mickey Zucker Reichert's trio of novels featuring a young Susan Calvin, I Robot: To Protect.

Including Reichert's novel in the list, though, presents me with a bit of a problem, and I'd like to talk about it. Back when Asimov collected his robot stories in I, Robot in 1950, he set the stories very specifically in the years 1998 through 2052. He also established Susan Calvin's birth in the year 1982. Those would have seemed like safely distant future dates back in 1950, but the passing years have caught up with I, Robot, as they eventually do to all science fiction stories set in the future. The earliest of the stories, "Robbie", is now set in a 1998 that never was, and the 26-year-old Susan Calvin that Reichert is writing about would be living four years ago. When Reichert was faced with this problem, she decided (wisely I think) to push Calvin's birth forward twenty-seven years to 2009, and set the story in the year 2035.

So, how do I fit in Reichert's born-in-2009-Calvin novels into my list with the original born-in-1982-Calvin stories by Asimov himself? I've decided to place I, Robot: To Protect in 2008, which is where it would have gone if Reichert had kept to Asimov's original timeline, and note parenthetically that the novel sets itself in 2035. It's an imperfect solution, but the best I can come up with. And since the story "Satisfaction Guaranteed" has a similar dating problem, I'll do the same with it.

So, with all that out of the way, here is my current version of the Insanely Complete Robot/Foundation Fiction List, consisting of the date, the story title, and (where necessary), which Asimov collection it can be found in. Following Ed Seiler's lead, works in black are by Asimov himself; works in blue are by other writers with the approval of the Asimov Estate, and works in red are by other writers but are not necessarily canonical:

1995 - "A Boy's Best Friend" (The Complete Robot)
1998 - "Robbie" (I, Robot; The Complete Robot; Robot Visions)
2004 - "Robot AL-76 Goes Astray" (The Rest of the Robots; The Complete Robot)
2008 (2035) - I, Robot: To Protect by Mickey Zucker Reichert
2009 (2036) - I, Robot: To Obey by Mickey Zucker Reichert 
2010 - “Insert Knob A in Hole B” (Nightfall and Other Stories)
2015 - “Runaround” (I, Robot; The Complete Robot; Robot Visions)
2015 - “Reason” (I, Robot; The Complete Robot; Robot Visions)
2016 - “Catch That Rabbit” (I, Robot; The Complete Robot)
2021 - “Liar!” (I, Robot; The Complete Robot; Robot Visions)
2023 (1995) - “Satisfaction Guaranteed” (The Rest of the Robots; The Complete Robot; Earth Is Room Enough)
2024 - “Balance” by Mike Resnick (Foundation’s Friends)
2026 - “Blot” by Hal Clement (Foundation’s Friends)
2029 - “Little Lost Robot” (I, Robot)
2031 - “Cal” (Gold)
2032 - “Evidence” (I, Robot; The Complete Robot; Robot Visions)
2032 - “PAPPI” by Sheila Finch (Foundation’s Friends)
2032 - “Lenny” (The Rest of the Robots; The Complete Robot; Robot Visions)
2033 - “Risk” (The Rest of the Robots; The Complete Robot)
2033 - “Escape!” (I, Robot)
2034 - “Galley Slave” (The Rest of the Robots; The Complete Robot; Robot Visions)
2035 - “First Law” (The Rest of the Robots; The Complete Robot)
2036 - “Plato’s Cave” by Poul Anderson (Foundation’s Friends)
2052 - “The Evitable Conflict” (I, Robot; The Complete Robot; Robot Visions)
2055 - “Robot Dreams” (Robot Dreams)
2058 - I, Robot
2063 - “Feminine Intuition” (The Complete Robot; Robot Visions; The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories)
2065 - “The Fourth Law of Robotics” by Harry Harrison (Foundation’s Friends)
2090 - “Christmas Without Rodney” (Robot Visions)
2120 - “Kid Brother” (Gold)
2140 Robots in Time by William F. Wu (six volumes)
1. Predator
2. Marauder
3. Warrior
4. Dictator
5. Emperor
6. Invader
2150 - “Light Verse” (Buy Jupiter and Other Stories; The Complete Robot; Robot Dreams)
2170 - “Too Bad!” (Robot Visions)
2180 - “That Thou Art Mindful of Him” (The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories; The Complete Robot)
2200 - “Carhunters of the Concrete Prairie” by Robert Sheckley (Foundation’s Friends) 
2160-2360 - The Positronic Man by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg
2425 -“Mother Earth” (The Early Asimov)
3421 - The Caves of Steel
3422 - The Naked Sun
3423 - “Mirror Image” (The Best of Isaac Asimov; The Complete Robot; Robot Visions)
3424 - “Strip-Runner” by Pamela Sargent (Foundation’s Friends)
3424 - The Robots of Dawn 
3604 - Robot City (six volumes)
1. Odyssey by Michael P. Kube-McDowell
2. Suspicion by Mike McQuay
3. Cyborg by William F. Wu
4. Prodigy by Arthur Byron Cover
5. Refuge by Rob Chilson
6. Perihelion by William F. Wu
3605 - Robots and Aliens (six volumes)
1. Changeling by Stephen Leigh
2. Renegade by Cordell Scotten
3. Intruder by Robert Thurston
4. Alliance by Jerry Oltion
5. Maverick by Bruce Bethke
6. Humanity by Jerry Oltion 
3616 - Mirage by Mark W. Tiedemann
3617 - Chimera by Mark W. Tiedemann
3618 - Aurora by Mark W. Tiedemann
3623 - Have Robot, Will Travel by Alexander C. Irvine
3624 - Robots and Empire
3730 - Caliban by Roger MacBride Allen
3731 - Inferno by Roger MacBride Allen
3736 - Utopia by Roger MacBride Allen
 4850 - The Stars, Like Dust
11129 - The Currents of Space
827 GE (12411 ) - Pebble in the Sky
977-978 GE - “Blind Alley” (The Early Asimov)
12020 GE - Prelude to Foundation
12028 GE - “Eto Demerzel” (Forward the Foundation)
12028 GE - Foundation’s Fear by Gregory Benford
12038 GE - “Cleon I” (Forward the Foundation)
12048 GE - “Dors Venabili” (Forward the Foundation)
12058 GE - “Wanda Seldon” (Forward the Foundation)
12067 GE - Foundation and Chaos by Greg Bear
12067 GE - “The Psychohistorians” (Foundation)
12068 GE - Foundation’s Triumph by David Brin
12069 GE - Epilogue (Forward the Foundation)
12067-12070 GE - “The Originist” by Orson Scott Card (Foundation’s Friends)
 49-50 FE (12117-12118 GE) - “The Encyclopedists” (Foundation)
79-80 FE (12147-12148 GE) - “The Mayors” (Foundation)
134 FE (12202 GE) - “The Traders” (Foundation)
154-160 FE (12222-12228 GE) - “The Merchant Princes” (Foundation)
195-196 FE (12263-12264 GE) - “The General” (Foundation and Empire)
270 FE (12338 GE) - “Trantor Falls” by Harry Turtledove (Foundation’s Friends)
310-311 FE (12378-12379 GE) - “The Mule” (Foundation and Empire)
316 FE (12384 GE) - “Search by the Mule” (Second Foundation)
376-377 FE (12444-12445 GE) - “Search by the Foundation” (Second Foundation)
498 FE (12566 GE) - Foundation’s Edge
498 FE (12566 GE) - Foundation and Earth
1056 FE (13124 GE) - “Foundation’s Conscience” by George Zebrowski (Foundation’s Friends)
1302 FE (13370 GE) - “No Connections” by Randall Garrett (The Best of Randall Garrett; Takeoff [both are Randall Garrett collections])


Now, not all of the dates listed above are what you might call canonical. Some of them are, but some are just wild-ass guesses on my part. Here's where they all came from:

“A Boy’s Best Friend”: Given the speed with which space is being explored and settled, a date of 1980 for the establishment of Lunar City seems reasonable. Assuming Anderson Senior was one of the original settlers, that places the story in 1995.

“Robbie”: Stated in I, Robot.

“Robot AL-76 Goes Astray”: After robots are banned from Earth in 2003-2007, before Susan Calvin joins US Robots in 2008.

“Insert Knob A in Hole B”: Before the use of robots on space stations, hence before “Reason”.

I Robot: To Protect: As stated in the novel, 2035. Based on Susan Calvin's age, given her birth in 1982, the story should take place in 2008.

I Robot: To Obey: As stated in the novel, 2036. Based on Susan Calvin's age, given her birth in 1982, the story should take place in 2009.

“Runaround”: Stated in I, Robot.

“Reason”: Six months after “Runaround”.

“Catch That Rabbit”: Six months after “Reason”.

“Liar!”: Stated in I, Robot.

“Satisfaction Guaranteed”: As stated in the story, takes place fifty years after World War II, i.e. in 1995. However, the characters have the same titles as in “Liar!”, and Susan Calvin is more knowledgable about emotions, so the story takes place after "Liar!". Also, Tony has more advanced vision than Dave in "Catch That Rabbit!"

“Balance”: Susan Calvin’s robotic servants flatter her in a manner similar to Herbie from “Liar!”, but she seems much more at ease with the idea, which places the story after “Liar!”

“Blot”: Story of the first exploratory mission to Miranda. Given a mission to Mars in 1998, a first expedition to Mercury in 2005, and bases on Titan in 2025, a mission to Uranus in 2026 seems reasonable.

“Little Lost Robot”: Stated in I, Robot.

“Cal”: Cal seems to be the prototype for the EZ robots of “Galley Slave”, so allowing a few years for the design and production of the latter places the story in 2031.

“Lenny”: Peter Bogart is now Senior Mathematician, so the story comes between “Little Lost Robot” and "Risk".

“Evidence”: Stated in I, Robot.

“PAPPI”: Immediately after “Evidence”.

“Risk”: Takes place ‘some years’ after “Little Lost Robot”.

“Escape”: Within a few months of “Risk”. (In I, Robot, "Escape" comes immediately after "Little Lost Robot", but logically, ought to come after "Risk".)

“Galley Slave”: Stated in the story.

“First Law”: Stated in the story.

“Plato’s Cave”: Shortly before Stephen Byerly becomes Regional Coordinator.

“The Evitable Conflict”: Stated in I, Robot.

“Robot Dreams”: Late in Susan Calvin’s career with US Robots.

I, Robot: The links between the stories are set fifty years after Susan Calvin joins US Robots in 2008.

“Feminine Intuition”: Five years after Susan Calvin retires from US Robots in 2058.

“The Fourth Law of Robotics”: Susan Calvin’s great-niece has her job.

“Christmas Without Rodney”: Slighting reference to the 20th century suggests the story takes place in the 21st. Common use of robot servants suggests the latter part of the century, when the Frankenstein Complex has faded away.

“Kid Brother”: Acceptance of household robots on Earth dates the story to the same general era as “Christmas Without Rodney” and “Light Verse”.

Robots in Time: Stated in volume 1, Predator.

“Light Verse”: Features a robot that is capable of original artistic expression (as was Andrew Martin), at a time when robot servants are accepted (as was Andrew Martin). These both suggest that the story takes place near the beginning of The Positronic Man.

“Too Bad!”: Sometime in the 22nd century, before the creation of the simplified robots in “That Thou Art Mindful of Him”.

“That Thou Art Mindful of Him”: Takes place about two hundred years after US Robots is founded (i.e. circa 2182). Mentions that the Machines phased themselves out of existence a hundred years earlier (circa 2082).

“Carhunters of the Concrete Prairie”: The combination of interstellar exploration and robots places this story at the time of the settlement of the Spacer worlds.

The Positronic Man: Andrew Martin is about a hundred years old “nearly two centuries” after Susan Calvin’s death in 2064.

“Mother Earth”: Takes place at the end of “the first few centuries of interstellar travel” when the Outer Worlds “were controlled, politically and economically, by Earth.” (quotations from The Caves of Steel, Chapter 5).

The Caves of Steel: Takes place a thousand years after emigration to the Outer Worlds ends. It also takes place 19 years after Elijah Baley first meets Jessie Navodny “back in ’02.”

The Naked Sun: Takes place one year after The Caves of Steel.

“Mirror Image”: Takes place one year before The Robots of Dawn i.e. one year after The Naked Sun.

“Strip-Runner”: Takes place after Elijah Baley starts his Outside group, but shortly before The Robots of Dawn (since the events in that novel aren’t mentioned in the story).

The Robots of Dawn: Takes place two years after The Naked Sun.

Robot City: Takes place about twenty years before Robots and Empire (Han Fastolfe is still alive, and the number of Settler worlds is smaller than in RaE).

Robots and Aliens: Takes place one year after Robot City.

Mirage: Features older versions of characters from the Robot City series, but takes place before the disappearance of the Solarians in Robots and Empire.

Chimera: Takes place one year after Mirage.

Aurora: Takes place one year after Chimera.

Have Robot, Will Travel: Takes place five years after Aurora.

Robots and Empire: Takes place two hundred years after The Robots of Dawn.

Caliban: Takes place a century after the Solarians vanish.

Inferno: Takes place one year after Caliban.

Utopia: Takes place five years after Inferno.

The Stars, Like Dust: Takes place a thousand years after Earth suffers nuclear bombardment (perhaps in an attack by the more conservative Spacer worlds).

The Currents of Space: Takes place five centuries before the founding of the Galactic Empire. (Note: Foundation’s Edge takes place about 22,000 years after interstellar travel begins, i.e. 24,000 CE. This is 12,566 years after the founding of the Galactic Empire, which sets the Empire’s foundation around the year 11,500. For no good reason, I’ve chosen 11,585 CE for the year 1 GE.)

Pebble in the Sky: Stated in the novel.

“Blind Alley”: Stated in the story.

Prelude to Foundation: Stated in the novel.

“Eto Demerzel”: Eight years after Prelude to Foundaton.

Foundation’s Fear: Shortly after “Eto Demerzel”.

“Cleon I”: Ten years after “Eto Demerzel”.

“Dors Venabili”: Ten years after “Cleon I”.

“Wanda Seldon”: Ten years after “Dors Venabili”.

Foundation and Chaos: Same time as “The Psychohistorians”.

“The Psychohistorians”: Takes place two years before Hari Seldon’s death in 12,069 GE.

Foundation’s Triumph: Takes place after “The Psychohistorians”.

“Epilogue”: Hari Seldon’s death.

“The Originist”: Begins shortly after Hari Seldon’s trial, ends several months after Seldon’s death.

“The Encyclopedists”:Takes place 50 years after the Foundation is established in 12,068 GE.

“The Mayors”: Takes place 30 years after “The Encyclopedists”.

“The Traders”: Takes place “two decades” before “The Merchant Princes”.

“The Merchant Princes”: Begins “almost 75 years” after “The Mayors”, ends six years later.

“The General”: Begins “over 40 years” after Hober Mallow’s meeting with Onum Barr in “The Merchant Princes”.

“Trantor Falls”:Takes place forty years before “The Mule”.

“The Mule”: Takes place 17 years after Han Pritcher joins the Army in 293 FE.

“Search by the Mule”: Takes place five years after the end of “The Mule”.

“Search by the Foundation”: Stated in the story.

Foundation’s Edge: Stated in the novel.

Foundation and Earth: Takes place immediately following Foundation’s Edge.

“Foundation’s Conscience”: Stated in the story.

“No Connections”: Takes place sometime after the establishment of the Second Empire.


(And now . . . the same list re-arranged in publication order.)

Happy birthday Isaac Asimov

I'm sorry he's gone, but at the same time I'm glad that he passed away before the country he loved began its long, ugly downward spiral.

The flame next time

One of Isaac Asimov's early stories was one he originally called "Pilgrimage" and then "Galactic Crusade", and which was eventually published as "Black Friar of the Flame". As its Wikipedia entry (much of which I wrote) puts it , " 'Black Friar of the Flame' has a reputation as Asimov's worst story, based largely on Planet Stories editor Malcolm Reiss' wretched title. However, it is an obvious precursor to Asimov's more successful venture into future history, the Foundation Series."

As he notes in The Early Asimov, Dr. A. was inspired by Charles R. Tanner's "Tumithak of the Corridors" to write a story which was set in the far future, but which was written from the point of view of someone who regarded the events in it as possibly-legendary ancient history. He also wanted to try his hand at a story on an interstellar scale, since all his previous stories had been confined to the Solar System. The story went through numerous rejections and rewrites over the course of two and a half years before its final acceptance by Planet Stories, which had the effect of souring Asimov on the story, and on multiple rewrites in general.

The story is not available online, and since it is still under copywrite by Asimov's estate, it won't be appearing online anytime soon. So, if you want to read a copy, you're going to have to acquire a copy of The Early Asimov and read it there (assuming you haven't already). Nevertheless, I have a sneaking fondness for this story, which may well be Asimov's closest approach to blood 'n thunder space opera. Since the planets Trantor and Santanni, better known from their later appearances in the Foundation Series, are first mentioned here, BFotF can be thought of as an alternate version of the Foundation universe, one where humanity shares the Galaxy with a single other intelligent spacefaring race.

Since the story's aliens, the Lhasinu, are native to the Vega system, a mere 25 light years from Earth, I got to wondering how they got to the point found in the story of ruling a separate empire that covered a third of the Galaxy. I decided over ten years ago to answer that question by creating a whole timeline leading up to the story's events, and I now propose to share that timeline with my vast hypothetical blogging audience. Here, then, is my version of the six thousand years of history leading up to "Black Friar of the Flame". (BTW, don't be surprised if you see a fanfic prequel to BFotF based on this timeline appearing later on this blog.)

2050
Hyperspacial Jump perfected. Exploration of interstellar space begins.

2060
First colonies established on Alpha Centauri, 61 Cygni and Sirius.

2065
Alien race discovered in the Vega system. The Vegans are militaristic reptiles with a pre-gunpowder Iron Age culture. Contact with the Vegans is restricted to a scientific outpost located in Lhasinu, capital city of an island kingdom on Vega VI.

2070-2150
As Jump technology improves, the cost of interstellar travels falls, bringing colonization within reach of moderately wealthy groups. Older colony worlds begin founding their own colonies.

2150
Over 200 worlds have been colonized. The most distant, Santa Anna, is 500 parsecs from Earth.

2200
Population of colony worlds passes that of Earth.

2220
Colonial Bloc gains a majority in the Terran Parliament. Renamed Stellar Parliament. Alpha Centauri takes over administration of Lhasinu Base on Vega VI.

2250
Growing resentment of outer worlds on Earth. Growing breach between Sirius Bloc and Centauri Bloc in Stellar Parliament.

2275
Centauri-backed coup attempt on Sirius fails. Sirian Alliance secedes from Stellar Parliament.

2276
Earth rebels against Stellar Parliament, sides with Sirian Alliance. Sirians seize Vegan system from Centaurians, begin recruiting soldiers from Lhasinu.

2277
Centauri fleet defeated at Battle of Tau Ceti. Alpha Centauri recognizes independence of Sirian Alliance and Solar Federation.

2277-2300
Breakup of Stellar Parliament. Increasing use of Vegan mercenaries in interstellar wars. Returning Vegan mercenaries with human technical training enable Lhasinuic Kingdom to conquer Vega VI.

2300-2400
Industrial revolution on Vega VI. Vegans begin interstellar colonization.

2400-6000
Humans and Vegans occupy the Galaxy.

3200
Radec Loara of Helicon travels to Earth, experiences epiphany, founds Loarism to restore ancient culture of Earth.

3200-6000
Spread of Loarism among humanity. Earth becomes religious capital of the Galaxy.

6000
Vegan Mutiny. Vegans seize control of one fifth of the Galaxy. Foundation of Lhasinuic Empire. Beginning of Galactic Drive, the Vegan attempt to conquer the Galaxy.

6000-6100
Lhasinu gain control of one third of the Galaxy.

6100
Lhasinu take Earth. Unsuccessful attempt by humans to regain Earth exhausts both sides. End of Galactic Drive. Loarism begins to decline.

7600
Bloody Rebellion on Earth fails to free the planet from Lhasinu rule. Loarists and human worlds fail to support Earth. Loarists reach accommodation with Lhasinu.

8100
"Black Friar of the Flame": Great Rebellion begins on Earth. Loara Filip Sanat unites human worlds against Lhasinu Empire.

8101
Santanni Oligarchy withdraws from Loarist alliance. Battle of Luna. Lhasinu driven from Earth and other human worlds.

KIROV, BORIS

From the Encyclopedia Britannica:

KIROV, BORIS
Boris Maximovich Kirov, (in Russian, Борис Максимович Киров) (b. Petrovichi, Smolensk Guberniya, Russia, 2 January 1920?) was a Russian scientist and literary figure best known as a writer of poems and short stories. Thoughout his life, he was a tireless champion of freedom of expression.

Kirov's parents, Maxim and Natalia Kirov, were Russian peasant farmers from the small village of Petrovichi. Kirov himself demonstrated a precocious intelligence, teaching himself to read at five and writing his first poems at eleven. He entered Smolensk State University at fifteen and earned a degree in chemistry in 1939. He was working on a Doctorate in biochemistry when the Second World War began in 1943, and Kirov was conscripted into the Russian Army. First serving in and later commanding an artillery unit, Kirov saw action in Poland and Germany. When the Denikin regime was deposed in 1951 following the atom bomb attacks on Petrograd, Odessa and Vladivostok, Kirov supported the restoration of the Tsarina Olga. Demobilized after the Treaty of Teheran, Kirov returned to Smolensk State University to complete his studies, earning a PhD in biochemistry in 1953, and joining the faculty of Volgograd University the following year.

Throughout his academic and military careers, Kirov continued to write a series of poems and short stories, which were published in various Russian literary journals. Following the easing of press restrictions in 1956, Kirov published his controversial story «подкидыш» ("Foundling"), about a Jewish couple leaving their baby to be raised by gentile neighbors before being arrested by the White Guards. Kirov claimed that «подкидыш» was based on stories his parents told him of the White Terror of the early 1920s, when a number of Petrovichi's Jewish families were arrested and executed for alleged Bolshevist tendencies.

Arrested himself in 1957 for sedition, Kirov became a cause célèbre among Russian intellectuals. Kirov was finally released after the fall of the Kulikov ministry in 1959 and the subsequent liberalisation programme of the Sakharov ministry. Kirov was restored to his position at Volgograd University, and resumed publishing.

In the 1960s Kirov worked on an ambitious cycle of poems inspired by Karel Čapek's R.U.R. called Я, робот (I, Robot), which deconstructed Čapek's theme of the perils of mechanisation. This was followed by the epic Основание (Foundation) trilogy, a set of three narrative poems describing the fall of a future Galactic Empire and the rise of a Second Empire from its ashes. The Основание trilogy was widely regarded as an allegory on the fall and resurrection of the Romanov dynasty, and it earned Kirov's appointment as Poet Laureate by Tsar Nicholas III in 1981.

Kirov's last years were spent in a series of hospitals as his health deteriorated. He died in a Moscow hospital of kidney failure on 6 April 1992.