Book review: Robot Dreams by Isaac Asimov
Robot Dreams is a collection of 21 Isaac Asimov short stories. Going into the book, I had assumed — based on the title — that this was a set of his robot stories. It turns out that it gets its name from one of the stories in the collection, but the rest are a mostly random collection of Asimov’s science fiction work.
I’ve read my share of Asimov “Best of” collections, so many of the stories here I had encountered before. Still, for me there was a nice mix of pieces I’d read and fiction that was new. The main thing lacking in this particular book is that other times I’ve read these stories, Asimov would have written an introduction for each story, giving information on the history of its publication and any pieces of trivia he felt like sharing. In this book, there is only a single introduction for the front of the book, not for each individual work.
There are several stand-outs. The title story is quite good. “The Last Question”/”The Last Answer” are not explicitly related despite their similar titles but touch on similar themes of mankind’s relationship to God. “Eyes Do More Than See” is still haunting, many years after reading it for the first time. “Spell my Name with an S” is darkly funny, and probably as close as Asimov ever got to being Douglas Adams. “The Ugly Little Boy” has actually improved with age (or my ability to appreciate it has grown stronger in the previous years).
The unique addition to this particular edition are the illustrations by Ralph McQuarrie who is most famous for his design work on the original Star Wars trilogy. It’s good stuff. I don’t know if anyone other than a collector would buy the book solely for the pictures, but they’re quite nice drawings which add a nice little flavor to the stories.
As I said, there really isn’t an overall theme in this collection outside of the very general label of science fiction (there are, for example, none of Asimov’s Black Widowers stories). The stories here are very typical of Asimov. Of course, virtually everything I’ve read of Asimov’s is very typical of Asimov; the man was remarkably consistent. So, if you like Asimov, pick this up. If you don’t, avoid it. And if you’re unfamiliar, this is as good a place as any to start.
This review was originally posted in November 2010.
