The Robot Novels (series), by Isaac Asimov

There are quite a number of short stories and several novels that could be included in the "Robots series", but I'm focusing here on the four that feature R. Daneel Olivaw, including the first three which also feature Elijah Baley. I first read these novels, oh, probably in high school, at least the first couple of them. (I don't think it could have been elementary school, but I guess it's not impossible.) Anyway, the first three books are about an Earth detective named Elijah "Lije" Baley, who gets partnered with a Spacer robot named R. Daneel Olivaw. They're set around 3000 years in the future, when Earth is overcrowded (with 8 billion people, which probably sounded like more in the 1950s than it does in the 2020s), and has relatively few robots. And they live in totally enclosed cities, never seeing the outdoors. There are like fifty Spacer worlds, which were originally colonies of Earth but have since become independent and more powerful than Earth. They have relatively small populations of people and lots of robots (many of them more advanced than Earth robots). Unlike Earthers, Spacers do go outdoors. The fourth book is set about two centuries after Balely's death, but robots like Olivaw generally don't die, so he's still around. I guess I don't have anything more specific to say about the series as a whole, so I'll just stick to providing information in my reviews of the individual novels.

tek's rating: pending

The Caves of Steel (pub. 1954)
Amazon; Asimov Wiki; B&N; Goodreads; isfdb; Penguin Random House; TV Tropes; Wikipedia

This was originally serialized in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in 1953, before being published as a novel the next year. The copy I have was published in 1985, but I think I must have first read it in the early 90s. I'm re-reading it in 2022. Review coming soon.

Followed by The Naked Sun