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Robot Dreams

Robot Dreams

List Price: $6.99
Your Price: $6.29
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Dreams can come true
Review: As a robot myself, I'm always happy to see you pitiful humans reading about my kind. Dr Asimov was one of the best and brightest of you pitiful humans, and his work will be required reading when I take over your puny world.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Nothing special
Review: As all the story books it has some stories really good but the majority of the stories are not good even if we are in 2003 and all the stories were written in the 1950's, I can't tell you that is a waste of time reading this book, but the end of almost all the stories are really bad, maybe you can read a story or two between books and you will like it more than I.
Some stories had a strong message, but this kind of literature definitely is not for me even if we are now entering in the world of robots, by the way, about robots were only three stories, the others were "out of this world".

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Robot Dreams: Food of the Gods
Review: I am generally not one to rant and rave about a book, but Robot Dreams and in particular the story entitled 'The Final Question', is the exception. I ordinarily hesitate to sing the praises of something on the assumption that there might be something out there that I haven't read that is better; however, The Final Question is without any shadow of a doubt, the best short story I have ever read.

Let me elucidate. Starting with the seemingly innocuous question, "Can entropy be reversed?", Asimov proceeds, in a style all his own, to turn the reader's world upside down. When you've finished this story, you can do nothing but close the cover and sit and think for a while. In a piece that is a textbook example of the way a short story should be written, Mr. Asimov somehow manages to address that most basic of all questions, "What is the nature of our Universe, and by extension, what is the nature of ourselves?"

As an avid reader on all subjects, I enjoy being challenged by what I read but, speaking politely, the climax of this story, barely more than 15 pages in length, knocked me flat on my behind. No story I have read, before or since, has managed to turn life's basics quite so much on their ear as did this one.

I read somewhere that Mr. Asimov always felt that this was his favourite piece of writing, and I have no problem understanding why.

Read it...If you thought your world was dark before, I guarantee that "The Final Question", indeed, all of "Robot Dreams", will shed some light on the subject.

Sincerely,

Tony Hoffmann

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Robot Dreams- A Review
Review: I did like robot dreams, but I think if you have not read earlier works of Isaac Asimov, you would not understand some concepts of the book. I'm also glad that the author wrote the book into a collection of short stories, than rather a full length novel. A lot of the story's worked in a similar world, with repeating concepts and rules; the first rule of robotics is for a robot to not harm its maker, human. The second rule is that a robot must always follows its masters orders, and the third is for a robot to have self preservation. So the reader would not be jumping into an entirely new world every time a new short story started.

I don't want to bring up any of the situations in the book as not to spoil it, but I will say that there where very vivid details and allot of colorful writing in it.
A lot of the stories were so inspiring and well thought out, I think some of the situations portrayed in the book may well happen in the future if technology was advanced to that point. I think a lot of the ideas are fairly realistic too. maybe some day we will look back on this book and think how could some one who lived so long ago be so smart.

I don't want to bring up any of the situations in the book as not to spoil it, but I will say that there where very vivid details and allot of colorful writing in it. this book is a real page turner, it's very hard to put down.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Mostly NON-robot short stories
Review: I expected this to be a collection of robot stories because of the title, but only two are robot stories. They are the first two, and the first one is also a story from _I, Robot_ (which I just re-read). The second one is "Robot Dreams" from which the book takes its title, and it is another Susan Calvin robot story like those from _I, Robot_ but was written in the mid-'80s (_I, Robot_ was written 30 years earlier). It is in the same mold with the earlier stories, but with a nod to advancing technology (small computers, for instance).

Many other stories in this collection center on "Multivac," an immense computer. The name is an obvious derivative of UNIVAC, a large, vacuum-tube based computer of the early 1950s. UNIVAC became famous for predicting that Eisenhower would win the 1952 election based on early returns (against pundit predictions that Stevenson would win). That led directly to one story, "Franchise," which takes the ability to sample a small number of votes to predict a total election outcome and drives the idea to an absurd (but nevertheless interesting) extreme.

There are a variety of other stories, from ones dealing with beings without bodies to one talking about an alien medical investigator who has come to Earth to find out more about a disease. All are worth the read, and some are truly fascinating and end in very unexpected ways.

Ralph McQuarrie provides the cover illustration and several others for individual stories; they are of the style familiar to anyone who has seen original art from "Star Wars" (which he worked on). Asimov's introduction is amusing; he explains what he got right in predicting the future--and what he got spectacularly wrong. He discusses this with respect to both stories in the book (Multivac, for instance) and to other books and stories he had written decades earlier.

All in all, this book was a fun read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Mostly NON-robot short stories
Review: I expected this to be a collection of robot stories because of the title, but only two are robot stories. They are the first two, and the first one is also a story from _I, Robot_ (which I just re-read). The second one is "Robot Dreams" from which the book takes its title, and it is another Susan Calvin robot story like those from _I, Robot_ but was written in the mid-'80s (_I, Robot_ was written 30 years earlier). It is in the same mold with the earlier stories, but with a nod to advancing technology (small computers, for instance).

Many other stories in this collection center on "Multivac," an immense computer. The name is an obvious derivative of UNIVAC, a large, vacuum-tube based computer of the early 1950s. UNIVAC became famous for predicting that Eisenhower would win the 1952 election based on early returns (against pundit predictions that Stevenson would win). That led directly to one story, "Franchise," which takes the ability to sample a small number of votes to predict a total election outcome and drives the idea to an absurd (but nevertheless interesting) extreme.

There are a variety of other stories, from ones dealing with beings without bodies to one talking about an alien medical investigator who has come to Earth to find out more about a disease. All are worth the read, and some are truly fascinating and end in very unexpected ways.

Ralph McQuarrie provides the cover illustration and several others for individual stories; they are of the style familiar to anyone who has seen original art from "Star Wars" (which he worked on). Asimov's introduction is amusing; he explains what he got right in predicting the future--and what he got spectacularly wrong. He discusses this with respect to both stories in the book (Multivac, for instance) and to other books and stories he had written decades earlier.

All in all, this book was a fun read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: absolutely brilliant
Review: I loved this book, especially the illustrations that were in the hard cover version. The stories made robots more interesting, appealling and dare I say human like. They all devleoped their own personalities, and eccentirc habits. Fantastic

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It's one of the greatest books I've ever read.
Review: It's one of the greatest books I've ever read. The first time I read it, just caught me (I was 12). And the story "the final question", even now, is one of my favorites to talk about.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Greatest book I have ever read
Review: Simply put, Robot Dreams is the greatest book I have ever read in my life. I first read it about 10 years ago and have read it about five times since then. It is an exhibition of the greatest science fiction ever written and a clear display that Asimov is the greatest, most creative, mind to ever delve into the genre.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Good story sampler, great art.
Review: Someone wrote that he only knew of one story being in another collection, and another wrote that it's only complete if you have Robot Visions as well. Here's the scoop.

Robot Visions has 7 of the 9 stories from I, Robot, 2 stories from Bicentennial Man and one unique to Robot Visions, the title story. The I, Robot and Bicentennial Man stories are all also included in The Complete Robot.

Robot Dreams, as others have pointed out, is actually a well-rounded compendium and has only a few robot stories. The title story is unique to this collection, but the three others are included in The Complete Robot (one of those is an I, Robot story).

So, the first story is from I, Robot, and the second is the newly-penned title story. The next 5 stories are from Nightfall, then comes the title story from Martian Way. Then come two from Earth is Room Enough and one from Nine Tomorrows. The next two stories are from Buy Jupiter, and then three stories from Nine Tomorrows. There follows the final story from Asimov's Mysteries, then a story that's been in four other collections, including TCR. Finally, the last two stories are from The Winds of Change.


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