I, Robot gathers nine interlinked stories that trace the rise of the positronic robot, framed as the reminiscences of Dr. Susan Calvin, the brilliant and formidable "robopsychologist" of U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, as she looks back on a career spent understanding artificial minds. Together the stories chart humanity's uneasy relationship with its most powerful creations, from a child's mute robot nursemaid to machines that quietly begin to run the world's economy.
Binding the collection is Isaac Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics, the elegant ethical rules hardwired into every robot to keep them safe—and the source of nearly every puzzle in the book. Each story turns on a robot behaving in a way that seems to violate the Laws, and on the logic needed to explain what is really happening. The result is less action than intellectual detective work, exploring the gaps, conflicts, and unintended consequences hidden inside even the cleanest set of rules.
A foundational work of twentieth-century science fiction, I, Robot shaped how generations of writers and scientists think about machine ethics and artificial intelligence. Cerebral, witty, and endlessly influential, it remains the definitive introduction to Asimov's robots.