SOURCE: Touponce, William F. “The Robot Stories.” In Isaac Asimov, pp. 32-43. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991.

In the following essay, Touponce characterizes the science in Isaac Asimov's robot stories, regarding them as innovative and influential tales.

Asimov's Noble Robots

Asimov's robot stories are collected in five volumes: I, Robot (1950), The Rest of the Robots (1964), The Complete Robot (1982), Robot Dreams (1986), and Robot Visions (1990). The last two volumes contain only a few previously uncollected robot stories, and the third volume is an omnibus in which previously published stories are arranged topically. I, Robot is by most critical accounts one of the most influential books in the history of modern science fiction because it established new conventions for writing robot stories. For instance, in Asimov's stories, robots were presented as human artifacts rationally engineered for human happiness. By their very nature, Asimov's robots could not turn menacingly against their human masters and...