Interesting Read | The Naked Sun

Nice ending after the ending! | The Naked Sun | Isaac Asimov

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	• The Naked Sun Isaac Asimov Spectra, 1991 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 64 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Naked Sun

I first read "The Naked Sun", by Isaac Asimov, in 1963, as a teenager. It was great reestablishing my acquaintance with the audio version!

Interesting Read

The story was a little in depth and the only problem I had with it was the amount of time it took to provide a background for the planet's culture. If you aren't able to understand the lifestyle that these people have enforced on themselves you will find it hard to understand anything else in the story. Despite this it is well written story and full of imagination. A very easy read.

Nice ending after the ending!

I absolutely love this book. The mystery was a good one, but the moral of the story was far bigger then the story itself. I have read the foundation series and I love the way this book tied into the foundation series (specially to the last foundation book) I have ready many a mythological, fantasy books and Asimov has to be one of the great minds of all time.

Love the message of the book.

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Jehosaphat! Holmes in Space!

I just got done reading The Naked Sun in record time - over the course of a few measly days - and that, I suppose, is testament to just how compelling a writer Asimov was. Can you put it down once you stop? No. Would you be inclined to do so? Not likely. Having written hundreds of books, Asimov had honed his craft down to a tee. There are no lengthy expositions, superfluous descriptions, esoteric metaphors, similes, or other unnecessary literary devices in an Asimov book; simply, there are characters, plot, world-building, and ideas, lots of ideas. If you've read, The Caves of Steel, or any other fiction by Asimov, and liked it, your sure to enjoy this book. as the second book in a trilogy, it felt slightly weaker than Caves, but held its own. Plainclothesman Elijah Baley develops in this book far more than in the previous installment. one thing this tale lacks that the first one had is a sense of urgency and/or danger. Asimov seems to have dialed down the action a bit well cranking up the mystery. But hey - what, exactly, is wrong with that?

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Asimov keeps me hooked on the series

The Naked Sun is a sequel to The Caves of Steel featuring Elijah Bailey and his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw.

A murder has taken place on the planet Solaria and it's up to Elijah and Daneel to solve it. However, Solaria is not like Earth. In the future the major cities on Earth are covered by huge metal domes and Earth is greatly over-populated. Humans don't look too kindly at robots. Most humans, including Elijah, are agoraphobic (fear open spaces). On Solaria the human population is very small, everyone lives on massive estates and there are thousands of robots for each human. Humans are bred to fear direct human contact so in order to 'view' each other they use complex holographic technology. Robots cater to every human need. This is pretty much Hell for somebody like Elijah but alas he is called into action.

I actually liked the plotting in The Naked Sun a bit more than The Caves of Steel. Because the people on Soliaria are the polar opposite of the people on Earth some interesting situations arise. For example, Earth humans are looked at as dirty animals and the thought of even being in the same room as an Earthman is sickening to a Solarian. Elijah, who craves direct human interaction, is forced to live by himself in a massive estate and he quickly becomes fed up with all of the robots trying to cater to every need of his. Elijah also does some 'growing up' in this novel.

One of my minor complaints with Caves of Steel is that some plot elements are a bit too convenient, only to keep the mystery alive. There is still a little bit of that in the Naked Sun, but to a lesser degree.

I strongly recommend this book, but read Caves of Steel first if you haven't already.

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A millennium into the future, two advancements have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the Galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. On the beautiful Outer World planet of Solaria, a handful of human colonists lead a hermit-like existence, their every need attended to by their faithful robot servants. To this strange and provocative planet comes Detective Elijah Baley, sent from the streets of New York with his positronic partner, the robot R. Daneel Olivaw, to solve an incredible murder that has rocked Solaria to its foundations. The victim had been so reclusive that he appeared to his associates only through holographic projection. Yet someone had gotten close enough to bludgeon him to death while robots looked on. Now Baley and Olivaw are faced with two clear impossibilities: Either the Solarian was killed by one of his robots--unthinkable under the laws of Robotics--or he was killed by the woman who loved him so much that she never came into his presence!

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