December Book Study: The Caves of Steel

As paraphrased from Fenika's posts in the other book study threads:

Welcome to the F/SF Book Study. For the month of December we will be discussing The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov.

***Spoilers*** will be streaking naked through this thread unpredictably. You have been warned!


Here are the previous book studies. Please feel free to continue the discussion.

2008:
Ender's Game (August)
Lies of Locke Lamora (September)
A Deepness in the Sky (October)
A Fire in the Deep (November)
Storm Front (December)

2009:
I Am Legend (January)
The Onion Girl (February)
Lord of Light (March)
Small Gods (April)
Beggars in Spain (May)
The Once and Future King (June)
Foundation (July)
The Graveyard Book (August)
Neuromancer (September)
The Last Wish (October)
The Knife of Never Letting Go (November)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (December)

2010:
Battle Royale (January)
Jhereg (February)
Cyberabad Days (March)
Tigana (April)
Next (May)
Perdido Street Station (June/July)
Boneshaker (August)
His Majesty's Dragon (September)
Never Let Me Go (October)
The Child Thief (November)
Solaris (December)

2011:
Lirael (January)
Blindsight(February)
Lavinia (March)
Hugo nominees (April)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (May)
Dawn (June)
Good Omens (July)
The Hunger Games (August)
The Last Unicorn (September)
Ubik (October)
The Colour of Magic (November)

I'm a little over halfway through this. It's weird. I read some of the stories in I,Robot when I was younger, and I don't remember Asimov's writing being this...bad. I mean, it's fine, but every now and then I'll come across a sentence that makes me stop and take note (and not in a good way).

Still, while the writing might not be all that great, I've been drawn in anyway. I think it's kind of funny how even though this story's set in the distant future, the social norms are still very much grounded in the 1950s. There seem to be distinct male and female jobs- at one point the police chief mentions 'Doris from the woman's division.' The family unit is still mom, dad, and no more than two kids. It seems strange that the future would be so different and yet at the same time stay so much the same. As a sci-fi writer, I often worry if there's a time stamp on my work, that if someone read it fifty years from now they could just see the influence my time had on me and say 'Oh yeah, this was totally written in the early two-thousand-tens.' I think that's the case here with Asimov.

I finished this the other day. Overall I found it pretty underwhelming, though I did like the resolution of the central mystery. I think Asimov is one of those writers where the ideas are more important than the overall plot. Or the characters. Or the writing. Still, I'm glad I read it as I do love robots and his books are pretty much the templates for robot lit. Even though I wasn't keen on Asimov's style, I'd still be interested in reading the other books in the series.

Oh, and did anyone else think of Data from Star Trek whenever David spoke? Especially when he got confused about idioms or curious about human customs.