Asimov's Complete Robot
 

I've never read anything by Asimov because while I fully acknowledge him as a grand master of the Sci-fi genre, I have read too many people dismiss it on the basis of it being dated and the characterization being very poor. On top of that, I never did care for the premise of Foundation.

Having said that, I recently stumbled upon his Complete Robot collection and after reading the synopsis I found myself very intrigued. Has anyone read this one, or his other Robot novels like Caves of steel, The Naked Sun, Robots of Dawn and Robots and Empire?

I am quite interested in robotics, quite fond in fact of what was presented in A.I., the philosophy and consequences of robotica as well as the visual aspect, but I feared that Asimov might be too dated. Am I incorrect?

Also, are there authors who've done worthwhile collections/ novels on this topic?

The Complete Robot is a collection of all Asimov's short stories regarding robots, including the full text of I, Robot and The Rest of the Robots. As can be expected in any short story collection, it has some exceptional stories, and some ones not as good. Many people feel, me included that Asimov was at his best at the shorter length.

While some of the concepts are indeed dated, and Asimov has a rather plain style of writing (a scientist first, author later), but there is a lot to make his work worthwhile. Some of his short stories are magnificent, while of his novels, the Foundation series (originally a set of short stories) and the Robot novels, particularly The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun are very good. The Robots of Dawn, written in the 80s, is more uptodate but also more rambling. I thought Robots and Empire was probably the weakest of the Robot novels.

Having said that, Asimov was the originator of the term "robotics" and the creator of the Three Laws of Robotics, and one cannot have been said to have read about robotics without having read his seminal works.

The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun are definately worth checking out. They would right up there when it comes to identifying Asimov's "best" novel. They're more or less robot mystery novels if that sort of thing interests you.

As Shehzad said, Asimov is a fine short story writer so do check out The Complete Robot, it contains all of I, Robot and costs so the same as just getting I, Robot, so you may as well get the lot.

If you're interested in robots, AI and the philosophy of the thing I recommend also checking out the John Sladek novels Tik-Tok and Roderick (also published as The Complete Roderick including Roderick at Random). They're very interesting looks at robots, and also savagely funny.

Let me second everything that's been said here, and add that "Caves of Steel" and the other robot novels are very, very different from the Foundation novels, being mystery stories set in a SF universe instead of traditional SF. I love them.

I don't find Asimov's ideas to be anymore dated than any other author of the period, like Heinlein or Clarke. None of them seemed to predict the extent to which smoking cigarettes would fall out of fashion in America, for instance. :D But little things like that are so easy to overlook in favor of fun ideas and plots.

I'd venture to say that Asimov's characterizations were at their best with the protagonist of "Caves of Steel," but I'm sure that's arguable.

I think Asimov has often been unfairly criticised. I've read most of his books and on the whole enjoyed them. I do agree that his weakness probably is his characterisation and inter personal relationships- they never seemed totally convincing to me.
He may not have coined the term ROBOT but he certainly brought his scientific knowledge to bear on the theme and I think the positronic brain was his idea. Of course, as already stated his three laws of robotics have been accepted by most of the science fiction fraternity.

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I've only read a few of the Robot short stories but they strike me as being more plausible, emotional and interesting than the Foundation stories. The Robot series has been widely credited with inspiring whole generations of people to go into the sciences and create robots. I think it would be interesting to see all Asimov did on the subject and will keep an eye out for the anthology. He did sort of lay down the original blueprint.

Has anybody heard anything more about the I, Robot movie?

It has absolutely nothing in common with Asimov's work other than the 'Three Laws'.

It is not based on an Asimov story.

The presence of Will Smith, in my opinion, pretty much guarantees that the movie will reek.

Look on the bright side, the film will have lots of shouting in it. :)

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Thank you Mugwump. I have been ranting about this for months now. I'm extremely disappointed at the direction the project has taken.