julian/blog

I’ve read a lot of Asimov. I haven’t read anywhere near half of what he’s written, but as far as sci-fi goes, I’ve read the entirety of the Foundation series and the majority of the Robot series (most of the ones I haven’t read fall in the “short story” category rather than the “novel” category—I’ve read all the books involving R. Daneel Olivaw).

A lot of the initial reaction to I, Robot has been negative; often people have said that Isaac Asimov never would’ve wanted his name on such a movie. First off, Isaac Asimov never liked the title I, Robot—his publisher pushed it on the collection of short stories and Asimov couldn’t get him to change it. Now, people are pretty well aware that the I, Robot collection does not contain a single story and the movie is not trying to follow the storyline of any one of them. The movie is an attempt at expressing a story based upon the kinds of stories Asimov wrote about. Asimov did not write thriller action stories, no, but I believe that the ideas as far as robots and the logical problems arising from the Three Laws are soundly within the realm of what Asimov wrote about.

Do not read further if you have not seen the movie. My writing contains SPOILERS.

In many of Asimov’s later novels he wrote about the Zeroth Law: “A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.” This is essentially the problem that the movie deals with. The Three Laws, if followed absolutely, cause logical problems for more advanced robots. R. Giskard eventually develops the Zeroth Law, and later on, R. Daneel Olivaw is able to fully integrate it into himself. The problem is that robots cannot truly know what is best for humanity. VIKI did not have a proper understanding of humans—the creation of a lawless Sonny was specifically for the purpose of allowing Robots a greater understanding of humans. R. Giskard applies the Zeroth Law once, but it causes him to cease to function, because he cannot truly know what is best for humanity, so he is in conflict with the First Law. R. Daneel gains a great understanding of humans over many thousands of years, and only after that is he able to properly apply the laws. So the movie is dealing with the fact that a Robot has come to realize the need for something greater than the Three Laws, but is not able to properly apply it because she does not understand humans. Sonny is the attempt to understand this need for something greater.

Many of Isaac Asimov’s stories dealth with the logical problems the Three Laws presented, and the weird logical conclusions that Robots arrived at because of them. In his later novels, advanced Robots have to find the Three Laws malleable in order to even function. Wikipedia’s entry for the Three Laws cites many examples of these themes in Asimov’s later novels.

Really, I don’t see how this movie does not involve entirely Asimovian logical problems. The only problems with the movie are Susan Calvin’s age (she should’ve been much older), the fact that it’s an action movie, the fact that Sonny was such an incredible leap from the NS-5’s (an understanding of human emotion was something that did not happen until much later in Asimov’s stories, and Sonny clearly is a much more advanced robot than the NS-5’s—too much so), and well, that it doesn’t really fit into Asimov’s timeline for the Robot/Foundation universe.

All-in-all, I really enjoyed the movie. It makes me want to re-read all these Asimov books… I have so much reading to do.

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