Title: The Naked Sun

Author: Isaac Asimov

Category: Fiction

Page Count: 208

Rating: 45

The start to this book was a bit slow, but once it got into the swing of things, I was onboard with it. Of course, it mixes two things that I love – Isaac Asimov’s take on roboticsm and a murder mystery – and so it’s no surprise that I was a fan of it.

We join Elijah Baley and his partner R. Daneel, who just happens to be a robot, as they’re sent far away from earth to investigate a murder in one of the outer colonies. There’s a lot of what I guess you’d call “space politics” here, but then there’s also the good old-fashioned murder mystery which uses a sort of spin on the locked room mystery.

I liked the way that Asimov contrasted the Solarian society with our own, and how those cultural differences played into the mystery itself. For example, people tend to communicate via video rather than in person because they’re so used to living alone on sprawling ranches with nothing but robots for company. Because of all that, it’s definitely one that I’d have to recommend, along with the rest of the series.

Learn more about The Naked Sun.