Robots and Empire - Novel

Novel

In his memoir I. Asimov (1994), Asimov explained that following his commercial and critical success with The Robots of Dawn, he decided to write Robots and Empire with the intentions of making Daneel, "the real hero of the series," the novel's protagonist; and that Robots and Empire would create a bridge to the later volumes of his future history. About this second aim, Asimov said that he was persuaded against it by Lester del Rey and Judy-Lynn del Rey, his long-time friends and the editors of Del Rey Books, who thought that the fans of Asimov's series of novels would rather that Asimov kept the Robot and Empire/Foundation universes separate. On the other hand, his editors at Doubleday Books - his hardcover book publisher - encouraged Asimov to do what deep-down he wanted to do. From then on, Asimov proceeded with his plans for unifying the two series.

Asimov wrote Robots and Empire in a nonlinear fashion (other examples of nonlinear plot-structuring in Asimov's novels can be found in The Gods Themselves and Nemesis). Flashbacks by the major characters alternate with the present-time storyline. The story starts on the Spacer planet Aurora, where the heart of Amadiro's conspiracy against Settler civilization is developing. Meanwhile, aboard a starship, Gladia, Daneel, and Giskard visit the planets Solaria and Baleyworld before reaching the Earth, where this novel's climax takes place.

Asimov used this planet-hopping itinerary most notably in most of the volumes of the Foundation series from Foundation and Empire onward. Unlike the detective fiction methods of the previous Robot novels where Baley assembles the clues to a crime that had been committed, in Robots and Empire, a murderous conspiracy developing against the Earth, and its discovery by the robots, keep pace with each other right up through the final confrontation with Amadiro on the Earth. Then, the robots have only moments to spare in terminating Amadiro's evil plan for a quick death to all Earthlings.

As well as linking the two series into a single future history, the present book served to address a criticism leveled against the largely radioactive Earth as depicted in Pebble in the Sky and mentioned in several other books. Though not explicitly stated, there was the clear implication the world being mostly radioactive and humans precariously surviving in the uncontaminated areas in between was the result of a nuclear war hundreds or thousands of years before the time of the plot. This would have made "Pebble in the Sky" part of the post-nuclear war sub-genre common in the 1950s. It was, however, pointed out by critics that such an extensive use of nuclear weapons as to leave persistent and widespread radiation even after centuries would have completely destroyed all life on Earth at the moment when it took place. Therefore, in the present book Asimov provided a different origin for the future Earth's radioactivity.