|
''Robots and Empire'' is a science fiction novel written by the American author Isaac Asimov and published by Doubleday Books in 1985. It is part of Asimov's ''Robot'' series, which consists of many short stories (collected in ''I, Robot'', ''The Rest of the Robots'', and ''The Complete Robot'') and several novels (''The Caves of Steel'', ''The Naked Sun'', and ''The Robots of Dawn''). ''Robots and Empire'' is part of Asimov's consolidation of his three major series of science fiction stories and novels: his ''Robot'' series, his ''Galactic Empire'' series and his ''Foundation'' series. (Asimov also carried out this unification in his novel ''Foundation's Edge'', and its sequels, thus unifying the three series of fiction into a single future history). In the novel, Asimov depicts the transition from his earlier Milky Way Galaxy, inhabited by both human beings and positronic robots, to his Galactic Empire. The galaxy of his earlier trilogy of ''Robot'' novels is dominated by the blended human/robotic societies of the fifty "Spacer" planets, dispersed over a wide part of the Galaxy. While the Earth is much more populous than all of the Spacer planets combined, its people are looked down upon by the Spacers and treated as second-class citizens. For a long time, the Spacers have forbidden immigration of people from the Earth. But Asimov's later Galactic Empire is populated by many quadrillions of human beings on hundreds of thousands of habitable planets; and by very few robots (such as R. Daneel Olivaw). Even the technology to maintain and upgrade robots exists on only a few out-of-the-way planets. (R. Daneel Olivaw undergoes some of these upgrades, especially to his positronic brain, over a period of more than 10,000 years.) Therefore, Asimov's novel attempts to describe how his earlier ''Robot'' series ultimately connects to his ''Galactic Empire'' series. ==Plot summary== The Earthman Elijah Baley (the detective hero of the previous ''Robot'' books), has died nearly two centuries earlier. During these two centuries, Earth-people have overcome their agoraphobia and resumed space colonization, using faster-than-light drive to reach distant planets beyond the earlier "Spacer" worlds. Their inhabitants, calling themselves "Settlers" rather than "Spacers", revere Earth as their mother-world. Baley's memory remains in the mind of his former lover, Gladia Delmarre, a "Spacer". It is discovered that Solaria, the homeworld of Gladia, and the 50th-established of the Spacer planets, has become empty of all inhabitants except for millions of robot servants. A seventh-generation descendant of Baley's, Daneel Giskard ('D.G.') Baley, gains Gladia's help in visiting Solaria, to explain the destruction of several "Settler" spaceships making landings there, and also to capture the abandoned robots. Gladia is accompanied by the positronic robots R. Daneel Olivaw and R. Giskard Reventlov (Giskard has secret telepathic powers of which only R. Daneel knows. ): both the former property of their creator, Dr. Han Fastolfe, who bequeathed them to Gladia in his will. At the same time, Daneel and Giskard are engaged in a struggle of wits with Fastolfe's rivals: the roboticists Kelden Amadiro and Vasilia Aliena, Fastolfe's estranged daughter. Frustrated by his series of failures, Amadiro accepts an ambitious and unscrupulous apprentice, Levular Mandamus, who plans to destroy the population of the Earth by a newly developed weapon, the "nuclear intensifier", with which to accelerate the natural radioactive decay in the upper crust of the Earth, thereby making the surface of the Earth radioactive. R. Daneel and R. Giskard discover the roboticists' plan, and attempt to stop Amadiro; but are hampered by the First Law of Robotics, which prevents them from direct attack on Amadiro. Daneel, meanwhile, has formulated an additional Zeroth Law of Robotics: which might enable them to overcome Amadiro. When Vasilia accuses Giskard of telepathy (earlier created by herself) Giskard is compelled to manipulate her mind to make her forget about his telepathic powers. The two robots locate Amadiro and Mandamus on Earth, at the site of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. After Amadiro admits their plans, Giskard alters Amadiro's brain (using the newly created Zeroth Law); but in so doing, threatens his own. Now alone with the robots, Mandamus claims that his intentions were to draw out the radioactive catastrophe over many decades, rather than the mere years that Amadiro wanted, and Giskard, believing it best for humanity to abandon the Earth, allows Mandamus to do this (resulting in the situation depicted by ''Pebble in the Sky''), and deprives Mandamus of the memory of doing so. Giskard predicts, correctly, that by forcing humanity into leaving the Earth, vigor will be reintroduced into mankind and the new Settlers will populate space until all the governments of the interstellar colonies form a "Galactic Empire". Under the stress of changing the course of humanity (against First and Zeroth Laws), R. Giskard himself suffers a soon-fatal malfunction of his positronic brain, and confers his telepathic ability upon R. Daneel. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Robots and Empire」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|