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Isaac Asimov – The Robots of Dawn | Review

Title: The Robots of Dawn

Author: Isaac Asimov

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 480

Rating: 3.5/5

This book is one of the installments in Asimov’s Robot series, and so that makes it essentially a science fiction detective novel with a whole bunch of ethics thrown in. Asimov is probably most famous for creating the three laws of Robotics, which are the following:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

What’s fun about this book, like the other books that tie in with these laws, is that Asimov basically created them only so that he could bend and break them. We get some great examples of that here, including some suggestions of scenarios which could cause two of the laws to come into conflict with themselves and to cause a robot to overload.

Then we have the morality side of things. In fact, the whole case here revolves around the murder of a robot, and so there’s a lot of discussion around whether such a thing is even possible. After all, robots aren’t alive, right? There’s even some stuff on how while you can use roboticide and homicide, the word “murder” doesn’t seem to quite apply.

Obviously I don’t want to go too much into the details of the plot, because the last thing that I want to do is to spoil it for people. What I will say is that it holds its own both as a science fiction novel and as a mystery novel, and indeed I think that Asimov is one of the underrated masters of the genre. I’ve read a mystery of his called A Whiff of Death which was set in our world on an American college campus, and that was fantastic.

Another piece of good news is that despite the fact that this is the third book in a series, you can still read it as a standalone if you want to. Sure, you’ll get a little more out of it if you follow the series through from start to finish, but it’s not a hard and fast rule and all that you miss out on is a little character development.

So all of this brings us on to the final big question of whether this is worth reading or not, and my answer to that would be 100% yes. Asimov is a fantastic writer no matter what he’s doing, and while there are other books of his that are a lot of fun, this is great too. Jeez, he always is.

Learn more about The Robots of Dawn.

Stephen King – Firestarter | Review

Title: Firestarter

Author: Stephen King

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 512

Rating: 4*/5

Stephen King – Firestarter

This is one of Stephen King’s earlier books, and it’s one of those that I’ve put off for a while purely because there are so many other well-known Stephen King books on the market, but I feel like the basic idea of this book had still made its way into my consciousness. I’ll try to cover that without revealing too many spoilers.

Before the main story starts, when Andy McGee was a college student, he volunteered for a medical trial in exchange for $200. Only something went wrong, and many of the volunteers died. Others survived but were forever changed, often by inheriting strange powers. McGee himself earns the ability to ‘push‘ people, which is a little bit like using a Jedi mind trick to convince them of something. He also earns himself a girlfriend – and later a wife – by befriending a fellow test subject.

And then they have a child, and it’s this child that’s at the centre of much of the action. Charlie McGee is a little pig-tailed girl with a hell of a lot of power – if some of the characters are to be believed, she might even grow up to have the potential to split the earth in two. The book starts with Charlie and Andy on the run from some mysterious government entity, and the plot basically barrels its way along from there.

Stephen King

That’s all I’m going to tell you about the plot itself, but what I will say is that King does a great job of creating a sense of a constant threat from the government. It was so successful that the only thing I can think of that comes close to it is the threat and the conspiracy in Prison Break. It’s difficult to communicate just how real and how visceral the threat felt, but it was always there.

The characterisation was great here too, whether we’re talking about Charlie and her family or whether we’re talking about the bad guys that are trying to hunt them down. I particularly liked John Rainbird, an American Indian with a heavily scarred face from the Vietnam War, and I liked King’s revelation of how it actually came about and how that clashes with what the government would have you believe was actually happening in Vietnam. It also kind of reflects the corruption that’s shown by The Shop and its attitude towards the victims of the medical trial.

Overall then, I’d definitely recommend this, and while it might not be the best book to pick up if you’re new to Stephen King, that’s only because he has so many great books on the market. It’s a better option when you’ve read three or four of his books and you’re ready to dig a little deeper, but it’s up there in his top 10-20%. I really enjoyed it, and I think you will too – after all, it’s kind of hard not to. It’s just a gripping conspiracy thriller but with a lot of fire.