Bring on the tough stuff - there’s not just one right answer.
- Do these Three Laws really make robots safer for people? Asimov goes through a few problems with these laws in his stories, but are there any other problems that you think he leaves out? And why does he wait until the second story to spell out the Three Laws?
- Are the robots alive? There's no good scientific definition for "alive" (most definitions leave out certain things that we would usually consider sort of alive, like viruses), so this question is a little open-ended. Let's put it in concrete terms: in "Liar!," Susan Calvin contributes to a robot's insanity, so should she be charged with some sort of crime for that? After all, these robots seem to have some personality—doesn't that make them seem more alive?
- Asimov says he wrote these stories in order to get away from the Frankenstein Complex, the worry that our technology (especially robots) would destroy us. But do you think that these stories are ultimately a defense of robots? Or do they show us how robots could still destroy us, even with their Three Laws?
- Several characters respond to robots differently—for instance, Gloria loves Robbie, Gloria's mom, not so much; in "The Evitable Conflict," Byerley doesn't seem to trust the Machines, but Calvin does. How do you react to the robots in these stories? Do you sympathize more with Gloria or with her mom in "Robbie"? What about the last story—who do you think is right, Calvin or Byerley? Does it affect your reading to have these different characters respond differently to the robots? Does it make it seem like all of our possible reactions are in the stories?
- How do the robots in Asimov's stories differ from the robots (or droids or what-have-you) in other people's stories? For instance, Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars both have mechanical or created creatures—are there any similarities between these and Asimov's robots? Do all robots have any particular features beyond being created? (For instance, are all robots loyal or disloyal; or better than humans or worse than humans?) Or do robots from the 1940s differ from the robots of the 1980s and 2000s—do the robots reflect their historical context?
- All these questions about robots make us think we should ask about the human characters. Who do you like better in these stories, the robots or the humans? Calvin says that robots are programmed to be good whereas humans are free to be jerks. Do the stories reflect this? Do you like any of these characters more than the others? For instance, do you like Donovan and Powell better than Bogert and Lanning? If you prefer certain characters, why do you?
- What do you think about Susan Calvin being a woman? There have pretty much always been women scientists in the real world (check it out in cartoon form), but they don't always get all the attention. But here, Susan Calvin is up-front and center. Does it affect your reading when one of the main scientist characters is a woman? Does it affect your reading when she's almost always right? Do you think she's an interesting character? Or is she a stereotype?
- When Asimov collected these stories into one book, he added the frame of Susan Calvin telling her stories before her retirement. Why does Calvin get to be the frame narrator? Are there any stories where her narration just doesn't make much sense? Why do you think the interviewer tells us that she has passed away at the end? Does that affect how you think about this book?
- Why do you think Asimov chose these stories and chose to put them in this order? For instance, "Runaround" was from 1942 and "Reason" was from 1941, but that's the order that he places them in. In this order, it seems to tell a linear progression from simple Robbie to complex Machines—but how does that order affect your reading? To investigate this question, you might want to look at some of the stories that didn't make the cut, like "Robot AL-76 Goes Astray" (1941) or "Victory Unintentional" (1942), which have been reprinted in The Complete Robot.
- Does the Frankenstein Complex still exist—are people still afraid about technology and what it might lead to? Are people still afraid of robots today? If Asimov were alive today, what technology do you think he would want to write about to show us that we shouldn't be afraid?