My Isaac Asimov reread continues with the sequel to Caves of Steel — The Naked Sun. We return to the covered city of Earth long enough for our hero, Elijah Baley, to be given a new assignment — investigate a murder on a Spacer World!
What’s the story of The Naked Sun?
Here’s a blurb from the version I just finished:
On the planet of Solaria, Spacers live in almost complete isolation, tended by robot servants and disgusted by the thought of human contact. And yet, one of their number has been beaten to death.
Incapable of solving the crime, the authorities of the Outer Worlds seek help from Earth – from renowned detective Elijah Baley.
Partnered once again with the robot Daneel Olivaw, Baley travels to this strange new world and uncovers a plot that could change the relationship between humans and robots for ever.
It does the classic flip the plot trick of taking Baley from Earth, where all is new to him, not his partner. At this stage of writing (1950s), Asimov had long since moved on from his Foundation novels and it’s only with the grand unification of ideas in the ’80s we learn R Daneel Olivaw is known in the future as Demerzel and is instrumental in allowing Seldon to develop his ideas of psychohistory. For the purposes of this book, Olivaw is simply Baley’s partner.
How well does the book work?
Asimov’s writing is pretty dated in a lot of places, but a lot of the time this reads well as a classic cosy crime that happens to be set in the future. With Robots. Being Asimov, he can’t help but make the case pivot around his Laws of Robotics, and Baley drives quite a horse and cart through the Laws, much against the style of the many Robot stories.
The book also sets many ideas in motion around the need to leave Earth en masse and populate the galaxy, and it’s easy to see The Naked Sun as sitting right at the core of Asimov’s vision.
As a sequel I’d say it has a major flaw. While Baley is now the fish out of water in space, Olivaw is relegated to the corners of the story. There’s not enough balance and while the treatment makes the story work, I came away feeling the book demanded a third. I’ve no idea what the editors of the time said, but I like to think I would have strongly suggested a follow up.
Of course the ’80s would see Robots of Dawn as the Baley stories were unified with The Foundation. In terms of that unification, a lot of small threads happened when Olivaw was off-page (so to speak) and I look forward to seeing those gaps addressed (I hope) when I jump forward to the ’80s.
Until then it’s a decent enough read in its own right.
Where’s the picture from?
In the 1960s the BBC had a series of science fiction adaptations titled Out of the Unknown. The image is from the reconstruction of the Naked Sun episode.
Symmetry Junction 