[The Complete Robot] collects everything from "Robbie" (1940), which was the first robot story of this the most famous series of robot stories in the world, down to "The Bicentennial Man" (1976), which is the last of any significance, and just about the best story Asimov has ever written. (This may not be saying a great deal. It has become clearer and clearer over the years that Asimov is a much better novelist than storyteller, and that his best treatments of the robot theme are in two novels, The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, which are not included here.)

The trouble with most of the short stories lies in Asimov's fidgety preoccupation with the famous three laws of robotics, which he concocted round about 1940, which have been an imaginative inspiration to roboticists over the years. (p. 6)

As take-off points for speculations about how to construct an artificial intelligence...