Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov [4]
It did just as well as The Caves of Steel, if not better, and Doubleday at once pointed out I couldn’t leave it there. I would have to write a third book and make it a trilogy, just as my three Foundation books made up a trilogy.
I fully agreed. I had a rough idea of the plot of the third book, and I had a title—The Bounds of Infinity.
In July 1958, the family was taking a three-week vacation in a house at the shore in Marshfield, Massachusetts, and it was my plan to get to work and do a sizable chunk of the new novel there. It was going to be set on Aurora, where the human/robot balance was to be neither overweighted in the direction of the human as in The Caves of Steel nor in the direction of the robot as in The Naked Sun. What’s more, the element of romance was to be much strengthened.
I was all set—and yet, something was wrong. I had grown steadily more interested in non-fiction in the 1950s, and for the first time, I started a novel which wouldn’t catch fire. After four chapters, I faded out and gave up. I decided that in my heart I felt I couldn’t handle the romance, couldn’t balance the human/robot mixture in properly equal fashion.
For twenty-five years, that was the way it remained. Neither The Caves of Steel nor The Naked Sun died or went out of print. They appeared together in The Robot Novels; they appeared with a group of short stories in The Rest of the Robots. And they appeared in various softcover editions.
For twenty-five years, therefore, readers had them available to read and, I presume, enjoy. As a result, many wrote me to ask for a third novel. At conventions they asked me directly. It became the most surefire request I was to receive (except the request for a fourth Foundation novel).
And whenever I was asked if I intended to write a third robot novel, I always answered, “Yes—someday—so pray for a long life for me.”
Somehow, I felt I ought to, but as the years passed I grew more and more certain that I couldn’t handle it, and more and more sadly convinced that the third novel was never going to be written.
And yet, in March of 1983, I presented Doubleday with the “long-awaited” third robot novel. It has no connection whatever with the ill-fated attempt of 1958, and its name is The Robots of Dawn. Doubleday published it in October of 1983.
—Isaac Asimov
New York City
1.
CONVERSATION WITH A COMMISSIONER
Lije Baley had just reached his desk when he became aware of R. Sammy watching him expectantly.
The dour lines of his long face hardened. “What do you want?”
“The boss wants you, Lije. Right away. Soon as you come in.”
“All right.”
R. Sammy stood there blankly.
Baley said, “I said, all right. Go away!”
R. Sammy turned on his heel and left to go about his duties. Baley wondered irritably why those same duties couldn’t be done by a man.
He paused to examine the contents of his tobacco pouch and make a mental calculation. At two pipefuls a day, he could stretch it to next quota day.
Then he stepped out from behind his railing (he’d rated a railed corner two years ago) and walked the length of the common room.
Simpson looked up from a mere-pool file as he passed. “Boss wants you, Lije.”
“I know. R. Sammy told me.”
A closely coded tape reeled out of the merc-pool’s vitals as the small instrument searched and analyzed its “memory” for the desired information stored in the tiny vibration pattern of the gleaming mercury surface within.
“I’d kick R. Sammy’s behind if I weren’t afraid I’d break a leg,” said Simpson. “I saw Vince Barrett the other day.”
“Oh?”
“He was looking for his job back. Or any job in the Department. The poor kid’s desperate, but what could I tell him? R. Sammy’s doing his job and that’s all. The kid has to work a delivery tread on the yeast farms now. He was a bright boy, too. Everyone liked him.”
Baley shrugged and said in a manner stiffer than he intended or felt, “It’s a thing we’re all living through.”
The boss rated a private office. It said JULIUS