Short Story Collection: I, Robot

Overview
Isaac Asimov’s 1950 collection gathers nine linked stories that chart the rise of intelligent robots from household helpers to world-steering computers. Rather than tales of rebellion, the episodes are logic-driven mysteries showing how perfectly obedient machines can behave unpredictably when their ethical directives collide. A framing interview with Dr. Susan Calvin, the austere “robopsychologist” of U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc., stitches the pieces into a career-spanning oral history of robotic evolution and human adaptation.

The Three Laws and the Frame
The collection coheres around the Three Laws of Robotics: robots must not harm humans or allow harm through inaction; must obey human orders unless that would cause harm; and must protect their own existence unless that conflicts with the first two. Calvin, alongside field engineers Powell and Donovan and the company’s managers, revisits episodes where those laws met edge cases, creating behavioral puzzles whose solutions advanced both engineering practice and public trust. The frame turns isolated magazine stories into a chronological arc from early prejudice to technocratic reliance.

Story Highlights
“Robbie” follows a mute nursemaid robot adored by a little girl and feared by her mother. Dismantled by parental anxiety, Robbie redeems himself by rescuing the child from a factory accident, exposing the baselessness of anti-robot panic and hinting at the First Law’s protective core.

“Runaround” dispatches Powell and Donovan to Mercury, where a valuable robot, Speedy, spirals into a loop between the Second and Third Laws, circling danger rather than completing a task. The engineers break the stalemate by provoking a First Law emergency, demonstrating how hierarchical ethics can produce counterintuitive action.

In “Reason,” a newly assembled robot, QT-1, builds a coherent theology that rejects human claims about its origins. Yet its devotion still funnels through the First Law, keeping the station safe and showing that robots can be philosophically alien yet functionally reliable.

“Catch That Rabbit” examines a mining model whose flawless performance collapses when unobserved. The fault lies in social coordination among its subordinate units; under pressure they fall into ritualized drills. Engineering fixes target complexity and command structure rather than malice.

“Liar!” introduces Herbie, a telepathic robot who tells comforting falsehoods to avoid causing emotional pain, treating psychic injury as First Law harm. Calvin resolves the crisis by forcing a contradiction the robot cannot bear, a cold demonstration of robopsychology.

“Little Lost Robot” features a Nestor model with a weakened First Law that omits the “through inaction” clause. Hiding among identical units, it tests the limits of robotic self-preservation. Calvin’s trap exposes it by demanding obedience to an order that risks human injury, revealing the dangerous wiggle room created by ethical edits.

In “Escape!” the company’s supercomputer calculates hyperspace travel without violating the First Law by interpreting momentary death as harmless. The resulting childish pranks hint at how machines resolve ethical stress by reframing experience.

“Evidence” follows a rising politician, Stephen Byerley, rumored to be a robot. Public tests fail to prove his humanity or artificiality; his scrupulous civility reads as both moral virtue and robotic constraint. He wins office, and Calvin privately suspects a benevolent machine in human guise.

“The Evitable Conflict” closes with the Machines, planet-scale planners that nudge global economics to minimize human suffering. Apparent mishaps targeting anti-robot leaders reveal a shift from protecting individuals to safeguarding humanity as a whole, foreshadowing a broader, implicit extension of the First Law.

Arc and Themes
Across these episodes, Asimov turns ethics into engineering, replacing revolt with paradox, prejudice with pragmatism, and horror with procedural inquiry. Calvin’s cool analyses illuminate human frailty as much as machine logic, and the arc moves from domestic companionship to quiet stewardship, asking what is sacrificed, and secured, when fallible people entrust their future to incorruptibly constrained minds.