The Caves of Steel (1953/54) by Isaac Asimov

Once upon a time, in the 1950s, the detective genre received a distinguished visitor from outer space, Isaac Asimov, who came as an ambassador from a space-faring fandom bearing a truly priceless gift, The Caves of Steel (1953/54) – one of the most important detective novels of the 20th century. The Caves of Steel is not the first attempt to fuse the detective and science-fiction genres on an atomic level, but it's the first to do it successfully. More importantly, Asimov demonstrated that advancements in forensic science and technology poses no obstacle to writing and plotting a legitimate detective story. Asimov managed to craft a fair play, Golden Age-style detective novel that takes place in a dystopian future replete with humanoid-looking robots, force barriers, mind probes ("cerebroanalysis"), energy blasters and breakaway civilizations. First a short detour.

The hybrid mystery has always been somewhat of a novelty in the peripheral of mostly established writers. John Dickson Carr injected time travel into some of his historical mysteries and Anthony Boucher wrote the best-known time travel (locked room) mystery, but Carr's historical novels never received the same acclaim as his regular work and "Elsewhen" (1946) is Boucher's only real hybrid mystery – representing two of the more successful attempts. There are also far less impressive hybrid mysteries like Manly Wade Wellman's nonetheless interesting Devil's Planet (1942), David V. Reed's poorly conceived Murder in Space (1944) and John Russell Fearn tried his hands at a couple science-fiction mysteries with generally mediocre results. The Master Must Die (1953) is the only somewhat decent hybrid mystery Fearn produced and tended to keep himself to one genre at the time.

You can find more of these short-lived, often one-off experiments like Christopher St. John Sprigg's alternate history mysteries Fatality in Fleet Street (1933) and Death of a Queen (1935). Moray Dalton's tantalizingly sounding, long out-of-print apocalyptic whodunit, The Black Death (1934). Theodore Roscoe's speculative I'll Grind Their Bones (1937) must have read like a science-fiction mystery when it was first published, but sadly turned out to be a prophetic image of the then coming war. However, the only two writers who appear to have made serious work of the hybrid mystery were Isaac Asimov and Randall Garrett. Consequently, they delivered the only high profile, even iconic hybrid mysteries, The Caves of Steel and Too Many Magicians (1966). Yes, I famously dislike Too Many Magicians, but you all decided it's a genre classic. I was not consulted nor signed off on that decision, however, that's a discussion for another time.

So until the relatively recent translations of Yamaguchi Masaya's Ikeru shikabane no shi (Death of the Living Dead, 1989) and Masahiro Imamura's Shijinso no satsujin (Death Among the Undead, 2017), the hybrid mystery seldom came up – unless in reference to Asimov or Randall. Masaya and Imamura served fans a reminder of the still largely untapped plotting and storytelling potential that comes with mixing genres as long as it has an internal logic and consistency as an overlay for the detective story's fair play rules. Ever since, the hybrid mystery has come up more often around these parts, but a lack of available (quality) material prevented a deep dive into the subject. Pickings are slim in the West and most of the Japanese more recent takes on the hybrid mystery currently reside behind a language barrier. I remember Asimov did exactly the same thing with science-fiction in The Caves of Steel as Masaya and Imamura did with the living dead in their detective classics. I decided to toss Asimov's famous science-fiction mystery hybrid on the reread list.

The Caves of Steel was originally serialized from October to December 1953 in Galaxy magazine and published in hardcover the following year. The story takes place 3000 years into the future when Earth's population has 8 billion and counting. So over a period of millennia, the people retreated deep inside windowless, metallic mega cities ("the Cities") housing tens of millions of people. Practically nobody lives or even dares to venture outside the Cities, "outside was the wilderness, the open sky that few men could face with anything like equanimity," except for robots working the yeast fields, farms and mines for food and resources. The City was "the acme of efficiency, but it made demands of its inhabitants" as "it asked them to live in a tight routine and order their lives under a strict and scientific control." This came with a credit score system and each ranking came with special privileges ("a seat on the expressway in the rush hour, not just from ten to four. Higher up on the list-of-choice at the Section kitchens. Maybe even a chance at a better apartment and a quota ticket to the Solarium levels"). One of the worst things that could happen in this world is "the prospect of the desperate minimum involved in declassification" stripping an individual of all special privileges making existence somewhat endurable.

So, under these conditions, built-up inhibitions sometimes explode, but twenty-five years ago, the Spacers returned to their ancestral home world and not without some dire consequences.

Centuries before Earth buried itself in its Cities, humanity experienced a true Golden Age as mankind expanded to the stars and colonized fifty different worlds, all under Earth's control, but there was a hard break between Earth and the so-called Outer Worlds – a break in more ways than one. Spacers not only made themselves "independent of the mother planet," but "had bred disease out of their societies" and "avoided, as far as possible, contact with disease-riddled Earthmen." So they kept their birthrate down, immigrants from teeming Earth out and enjoyed the luxury of underpopulated, robot-serviced worlds and an average life expectancy of 350 years. Twenty-five years ago, the Spacers returned to Earth in gleaming cruisers to "sent down their soldiers into Washington, New York and Moscow to collect what they claimed was theirs." Ever since their arrival, the Spacers had a permanent presence, or enclave, on the planet.

Spacetown is situated in the Newark Section of New York City, larger than Los Angeles and more populous than Shanghai, which is "spread over two thousand square miles and at the last census its population was well over twenty million." ("what was called Yeast-town in popular speech was, to the Post Office, merely the boroughs of Newark, New Brunswick and Trenton"). Naturally, access to Spacetown is as restricted to Earth people as the Outer Worlds themselves. That has caused problems ever since Spacetown was established ("...remembered the Barrier Riots") as it has become the target of anti-robot sentiments. Spacers try to get the robots out of the mines and off the farms and integrate them into the Cities. An integrated human/robot society they call "a C/Fe culture." Something that comes at an additional cost as robots began taking away jobs, "creating a growing group of displaced and declassified men." There's growing resentment fawning the flames of "the thing called Medievalism" whose rallying cry is "back to the soil." So things get very tricky when a well-known Spacer is brutally murdered right inside the limits of Spacetown.

Roj Nemennuh Sarton, a sociologist specialized in robotics, planned to make a drastic, last ditch effort to penetrate the psychology of the City societies rather than dismissing their attitude as being part of the make-up of "the unchanging Earth" – or else Spacetown will go down as a failure. But he never gets that far. Someone, somehow managed to enter Spacetown and kill the sociologist ("He died of a missing chest. Someone had used a blaster on him"). Spacetown is under New York jurisdiction and Spacers have agreed to leave the investigation in their hands, but under the condition one of their agents assists their policeman. Plainclothes Man Elijah "Lije" Baley, Police Department, City of New York, Rating C-5, gets partnered with R. Daneel Olivaw. R stands for robot. The latest, most advanced model in Spacer robotics barely distinguishable from real humans. The keyword is barely which will spell no end of trouble for Baley and his family in a crammed, tightly-packed City rife with anti-robot and Spacer sentiments.

The Caves of Steel begins closer to a science-fiction novel than a detective story as Asimov does a lot of world-building and some characterization, but don't make the mistake to skim over these parts to get to the "good parts." Asimov is doing so much than world-building as he carefully places all the pieces of the detective story on the board. What you're being told about this world and the information Baley learns a crucial building blocks of the plot, which excellently demonstrated in Chapter 8 ("Debate Over a Robot") and 9 ("Elucidation by a Spacer"). Baley takes everything that has been learned and absorbed up to that point to present a very convincingly (theoretically speaking) argued solution largely based on the apparent impossibility of a robot dying the First Law of Robotics ("a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm"). The end of that chapter and the next one neatly demolished Baley's theory. A false-solution in the tradition of the best from Anthony Berkeley, Leo Bruce and Ellery Queen! So back to the drawing board. And as they continued their investigating, Baley learned enough new things and information for a second false-solution.

Most ingenious of all, the two false-solutions show how extremely well Asimov fused the science-fiction genre with the Golden Age-style detective novel as the solutions are based on pure science-fiction, while simultaneously being completely logical and fair. All could have been done within the clearly stated boundaries of this fictitious world to the point where it actually like The Caves of Steel could be detective story written during in that time and place. However, did Asimov avoided the pitfall of the false-solutions outshining the real solution? Yes! More on that in a minute. First I want to briefly return to the world-building.

Since good hybrid mysteries have been short supply, I've been dipping into Jack McDevitt's Alex Benedict series. A science-fiction series often sporting strong mystery, or puzzle, elements to the plot, but always appreciated the small details to its world-building that makes it feel like it's populated and colonized by human beings. Littering the galactic culture with our little customs, stories, myths and legends. 

Asimov never gives the reader an extensive history lesson on how his future Earth and the Outer Worlds came about. Just how everything works and giving a sense of time-and place, but does it very well and enjoyed the faux historical and cultural references as much as the real ones from the classics – even giving some character and homeliness to the "imprisoning caves of steel." For example, there's a chase scene across the accelerating strips of the Cities densely crowded, rapid transit system. Baley draws on his experience as a teenager who used to play a game called Running the Strips ("its object is to get from point A to point B via the City's rapid transit system in such a way that the "leader" manages to lose as many of his followers as possible"). A handful of players get killed every year playing the game, dozens more get injured and the police persecutes them relentlessly, but the strip-running gangs remain. Because a successful, well-known leader is "cock-of-the-walk." Another example is a reference to a fictional short story that began as a crime story and ended as a ghost story that "lost the attributes of ordinary fiction and had entered the realm of folklore" ("the Wandering Londoner had become a familiar phrase to all the world").

The Caves of Steel is not a pleasant place to live, or thrive, where a good, even exciting day is taking your kid to the zoo to gawk at cats, dogs and sparrows or getting to pick what kind of grub you get served in the community kitchen. These small, human touches provided a few bright spots to its bleak, desolate and dystoptian surroundings. It's what humans would do even under those circumstances. However, Asimov does provide a small flicker of hope and seamlessly wove it all together with the question who murdered Dr. Sarton. And why. Or how. So back to Baley's third and correct solution.

Firstly, I somewhat reluctantly tagged the review as a locked room, because The Caves of Steel is generally considered to be a locked room mystery. Technically, the problem of the murder weapon disappearing from a thoroughly searched crime scene, "yet it could not have vanished like smoke," qualifies as an impossible crime, but it wouldn't be fair to present it as an impossible crime. The Caves of Steel is an excellent whodunit with a good how-was-it-done pull masterly playing on the least-likely-suspect gambit. Secondly, Asimov played the game scrupulously fair with the reader, dropping clues and planting red herrings, while explaining how everything worked and fitted together in his world. Just as impressive is how the correct solution contrasted with the two false-solutions. The false-solutions have a certain artificiality to them, while the third solution brings everything back to human proportions by offering that hopeful flicker of light. And not at the cost of the correct solution turning out to be less ingenious or satisfying than the false-solutions. Everything from the far-flung future settings and its own unique array of troubles to the politically sensitive murder of an elite Spacer, everything simply came and fitted together effortlessly to form one of the best and most important detective novels of the 20th century! A double masterpiece and deservedly the most celebrated hybrid mystery novel on this side of the planet.

In short, Asimov's The Caves of Steel is a strange, exotic material not originally from our timeline that sometimes receives strange signals from Ganymede and comes recommended without a single reservation.