Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov [3]
Nor was Gold my only new editor. I sold a robot story to Howard Browne, who edited Amazing during a brief period when it tried to be a quality magazine. The story, entitled “Satisfaction Guaranteed,” appeared in the April 1951 issue of that magazine.
That was an exception, though. On the whole, I had no intention of writing further robot stories at that time. The appearance of I, Robot seemed to have brought that portion of my literary career to its natural close, and I was moving on to other things.
Gold, however, having published one serial by me, was perfectly willing to try another, especially since a new novel I had written, The Currents of Space, had been taken by Campbell for serialization.
On April 19, 1952, Gold and I were talking over the matter of a new novel that was to appear in Galaxy. He suggested a robot novel. I shook my head firmly. My robots had appeared only in short stories, and I was not at all sure I could write a whole novel based on robots.
“Sure you can,” said Gold. “How about an over-populated world in which robots are taking over human jobs?”
“Too depressing,” I said. “I’m not sure I want to handle a heavy sociological story.”
“Do it your way. You like mysteries. Put a murder in such a world and have a detective solve it with a robot partner. If the detective doesn’t solve it, the robot will replace him.”
That struck fire. Campbell had often said that a science-fiction mystery story was a contradiction in terms; that advances in technology could be used to get detectives out of their difficulties unfairly, and that the readers would therefore be cheated.
I sat down to write a story that would be a classic mystery and that would not cheat the reader—and yet would be a true science-fiction story. The result was The Caves of Steel It appeared in Galaxy as a three-part serial in the October, November, and December 1953 issues, and in 1954, it was published by Doubleday as my eleventh book.
There was no question but that The Caves of Steel was my most successful book to date. It sold better than any of my earlier books; it elicited nicer letters from readers; and (best proof of all) Doubleday smiled at me with greater warmth than ever before. Until that point, they wanted outlines and chapters from me before handing me contracts, but after that I got my contracts on my mere statement that I was going to write another book.
The Caves of Steel was so successful, in fact, that it was inevitable that I write a sequel. I would have started it at once, I think, if I had not just begun to write science popularizations and found I enjoyed doing that tremendously. It was not till October 1955 that I actually began The Naked Sun.
Once begun, however, it went smoothly. In many ways, it balanced the earlier book. The Caves of Steel took place on Earth, a world of many human beings and few robots, while The Naked Sun took place on Solaria, a world of few human beings and many robots. What’s more, although my books are generally devoid of romance, I actually introduced an understated love story into The Naked Sun.
I was entirely satisfied with the sequel, and in my heart, thought it was even better than The Caves of Steel, but what was I to do with it? I had grown somewhat estranged from Campbell, who had taken up an odd bit of pseudoscience called dianetics and had managed to become interested in flying saucers, in psionics, and in various other questionable matters. On the other hand, I owed him a great deal and I felt rather guilty over having largely shifted to Gold, who had had two of my serials in a row. But as he had nothing to do with the planning of The Naked Sun, I could dispose of it as I wished.
I offered the novel to Campbell, therefore, and he took it at once. It appeared as a three-part serial in the October, November, and December 1956 issues of Astounding,