Books

Octavo, boards. The second novel featuring detective Elijah Bailey and his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw by "the writer who virtually invented the science fiction mystery. In his novels THE CAVES OF STEEL (1954) and THE NAKED SUN (1957) and in the stories collected as ASIMOV'S MYSTERIES (1968), he masterfully bridged the gap between the two genres and proved that genuine detective fiction could be set in the future as well as in the present or past." - Pronzini and Muller, 1001 Midnights, p. 29. The human/robot detective team solve another murder, this one committed on Solaris, an Outer World with a robot-run economy, where the twenty thousand Solarians, thinly spread out over the surface of the planet, live in near total isolation from each other, and the presence or touch of another Solarian produces incapacitating physical repugnance. Bailey, from an underground Earth city, must overcome his fear of open spaces to solve the crime. "In its setting, it's a sort of inversion of THE CAVES OF STEEL, and it's equally cleverly plotted." - Pringle, The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction, second edition (1995), p. [249]. [Reference: Anatomy of Wonder (2004) II-42. Survey of Science Fiction Literature III, pp. 1476-9]. Inked signature to front paste down, soiling to board, head of spine bruised a good to very good copy in a good to very good dust jacket with tape stains to interior flap corners, remnant of label to lower spine panel (possibly library), light abrasions to verso of flap edges, several light damp stains to rear panel. No library markings to the book. The front panel is bright. (31897).

Robots and Empire is a science fiction novel by the American author Isaac Asimov and published by Doubleday in 1985. It is part of Asimov's Robot series, which consists of many short stories (gathered into several collections) and several novels featuring positronic robots.