On the remote planet Solaria the first murder for two hundred years has been committed. The Solarians are Spacers with a civilisation based on robots instead of slaves - and some pretty weird taboos and phobias. Into this strange set-up comes Terran detective Elijah Baley, assigned to find the murderer and act as an investigator for his government. But as an Earthman, Baley finds aspects of life on Solaria difficult, even terrifying, to cope with. (Men on Earth live deep underground in their vast caves of steel and are terrified of anything outside.) From the moment of his arrival on Solaria, Baley's investigation becomes an ordeal of nerves under the pitiless glare of the naked sun...
Me ha gustado la sociología que trasluce, pero no me termina de convencer el final y, sobre todo, lo forzado de la participación de la Tierra en este caso.
Parece un libro de transición más que con un fin en sí mismo.
The detective story ages pretty well, but basically nothing else here does.
Como historia policíaca funciona mejor que Bóvedas de Acero y plantea un contexto social totalmente opuesto a la Tierra de las ciudades-bóveda. Comienza a verse el tejido del gran arco argumental de esta serie de novelas de Asimov.
La Tierra era una sociedad atisbada al fracaso dando la espalda al espacio y la robotización. En las colonias estelares, estancadas en la longevidad/la reticencia al cambio y la excesiva robotización, se aproxima otro final. La novela desde luego da pie a que este argumento, así como las discusiones sobre la primera ley, continúe en sucesivas novelas.
El punto negativo es la visión machista y la poca habilidad a la hora de escribir personajes femeninos en Asimov, cayendo en clichés planos y machistas. Incluso considerando cuándo está escrito, cuesta creer que se pueda desarrollar el viaje hiperespecial y sigan siendo sociedades con el cliché machista.
Por alguna razón, le tengo un cariño especial a esta novela. No deja de ser la típica novela de detectives de Asimov pero el mundo solariano que describe me llamó mucho la atención.
Dar una reseña de cada libro de esta saga es repetir. Solo dire que es un espectacular libro en todo sentido una gran saga.
''Quemot grew warmer as he spoke. 'Civilizations have always been pyramidal in structure. As one climbs toward the apex of the social edifice, there is increased leisure and increasing opportunity to pursue happiness. As one climbs, one finds also fewer and fewer people to enjoy this more and more. Invariably, there is a preponderance of the dispossessed. And remember this, no matter how well off the bottom layers of the pyramid might be on an absolute scale, they are always dispossessed in comparison with the apex. For instance, even the most poorly off humans on Aurora are better off than Earth's aristocrats, but they are dispossessed with respect to Aurora's aristocrats, and it is with the masters of their own world that they compare themselves.
'So there is always social friction in ordinary human societies. The action of social revolution and the reaction of guarding against such revolution or combating …
''Quemot grew warmer as he spoke. 'Civilizations have always been pyramidal in structure. As one climbs toward the apex of the social edifice, there is increased leisure and increasing opportunity to pursue happiness. As one climbs, one finds also fewer and fewer people to enjoy this more and more. Invariably, there is a preponderance of the dispossessed. And remember this, no matter how well off the bottom layers of the pyramid might be on an absolute scale, they are always dispossessed in comparison with the apex. For instance, even the most poorly off humans on Aurora are better off than Earth's aristocrats, but they are dispossessed with respect to Aurora's aristocrats, and it is with the masters of their own world that they compare themselves.
'So there is always social friction in ordinary human societies. The action of social revolution and the reaction of guarding against such revolution or combating it once it has begun are the causes of a great deal of the human misery with which history is permeated.
'Now here on Solaria, for the first time, the apex of the pyramid stands alone. In the place of the dispossessed are the robots. We have the first new society, the first really new one, the first great social invention since the farmers of Sumeria and Egypt invented cities.'''
