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Robots: Machines in Mans Image
Hardcover
First published June 1, 1985
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About the author
Isaac Asimov
4,337 books27.7k followersWorks of prolific Russian-American writer Isaac Asimov include popular explanations of scientific principles,
The Foundation Trilogy
(1951-1953), and other volumes of fiction.
Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.
Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).
People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.
Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.
Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...
Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.
Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).
People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.
Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.
Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 21, 2025
This book is a collaboration between Asimov and Karen Frenkel. And I am quite sure that Asimov wrote only the first and last chapters. And maybe the seventh or they worked together on it.
How do I know? Because these chapters are interesting and the others quite dull. Well, the book was published in 1985 and there just did not exist what one wants to call Robots. There were clumsy machines doing industrial work that we can only see as ancestors of real robots. And 40 years later we have made astonishing little progress. (Maybe Optimus will be a real Robot. We will see.)
Because a robot by its definition is a futuristic concept coming out of Science Fiction. And as the authors say movies like Star Wars made people have unrealistic expectations.
So the first chapter is fine, telling us about the history of the idea, of Frankenstein and Prometheus and the wonderful clockwork machines of the 17th and 18th centuries. And the chapter about the future is also okay, although I do not altogether agree. Asimov tells us that humans and robots will live in harmony each doing what they do best. (Whereas I believe that humans will be superfluous once general intelligence is reached and the mechanics of robots are good enough to mimic the human body.)
The only really interesting chapter is the seventh. What is needed to make robots smart? And even this is only of historical interest. The authors tell us for example that a program developed in the 50s found a more elegant proof for one of the theorems of the Principia Mathematica which “delighted Russell” but was not accepted by the mathematical magazines because the author was not humans. I am not sure I can really believe it, the first part I mean, but certainly even now magazines are reluctant to publish AI generated papers.
The chapters written by Frenkel are a detailed description of the development of real life robots. For anyone interested in the history of robotics they might be interesting. But really, they are not.
How do I know? Because these chapters are interesting and the others quite dull. Well, the book was published in 1985 and there just did not exist what one wants to call Robots. There were clumsy machines doing industrial work that we can only see as ancestors of real robots. And 40 years later we have made astonishing little progress. (Maybe Optimus will be a real Robot. We will see.)
Because a robot by its definition is a futuristic concept coming out of Science Fiction. And as the authors say movies like Star Wars made people have unrealistic expectations.
So the first chapter is fine, telling us about the history of the idea, of Frankenstein and Prometheus and the wonderful clockwork machines of the 17th and 18th centuries. And the chapter about the future is also okay, although I do not altogether agree. Asimov tells us that humans and robots will live in harmony each doing what they do best. (Whereas I believe that humans will be superfluous once general intelligence is reached and the mechanics of robots are good enough to mimic the human body.)
The only really interesting chapter is the seventh. What is needed to make robots smart? And even this is only of historical interest. The authors tell us for example that a program developed in the 50s found a more elegant proof for one of the theorems of the Principia Mathematica which “delighted Russell” but was not accepted by the mathematical magazines because the author was not humans. I am not sure I can really believe it, the first part I mean, but certainly even now magazines are reluctant to publish AI generated papers.
The chapters written by Frenkel are a detailed description of the development of real life robots. For anyone interested in the history of robotics they might be interesting. But really, they are not.
June 25, 2018
What I read was very dated, but interesting. Didn't finish it because I lost it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews