Asimov wrote in the introduction Campbell told him that a good science fiction mystery wasn't possible because the author would and could use advanced technology to solve the crime. Asimov stated he "sat down to write a story that would be a classic mystery that would not cheat the reader--and yet would be a true science fiction story." In this story New York City detective Elijah "Lije" Baley teams up with a robot partner, R. Daneel Olivaw.
On the whole, the world Asimov creates seems harder for me to credit rereading this as a mature adult then when I was a teen. Partly that's because the tech as well as its gender depictions and relations date the book, but there are other aspects of Asimov's world I find hard to believe. The title alludes to the cities of Asimov's far future overpopulated earth, where 8 billion people live in semi-starvation and can only be sustained in carefully controlled supercities with tight rationing. When Asimov wrote this novel in 1953, the world population was near two and a half billion. It's now close to 7 billion, and it is estimated it will reach 8 billion in 15 years. Yet industrial societies hardly can be said to hover at the edge of famine as in his scenario, so it's hard to credit the world will be so transformed by population pressures not much higher than of today. However, I rather liked how he depicted social and psychological consequences such as Lije's agoraphobia.
Asimov also posits a world where there is great anti-robot sentiment because they are supposedly taking away jobs from humans--a strangely Luddite take from the usually pro-technology Asimov. But then, look at the tensions about immigration today. Fears don't have to be based on reality to have life in a society, and on that level the robot/human tensions seem if anything more relevant today than when this was written. I do rather like how through the development of Daneel and Lije's partnership Asimov explores how differences can ultimately be enriching and prejudices overcome. I quite liked Daneel. He reminds me quite a bit of Star Trek's robot character Data. And I think Asimov succeeded in what he set out to do in creating a solid science fiction mystery.
