The Naked Sun: Just How Culpable is a Robot?

Though the cover isn't the most pertinent to the story of The Naked Sun, it's still really cool not gonna lie. Now I want the whole seven-book series.

A couple of days ago I finished reading my first Asimov novel while sitting through a forty-five minute commute, and I have to say, I can definitely see why so many people liked his work. Though The Naked Sun is something of a sequel, being the second outing for Plainclothesman Elijah Baily (and his robot partner Danieel Olivaw), I didn't have any trouble following the events within or understanding the characters, so you could start here no problem. Offering not only an interesting and surprisingly logical whodunnit in addition to philosophical discussions on topics like the fallibility of the Three Laws as well as a transformative arc for our protagonist, I definitely liked The Naked Sun in all of its bizarre futuristic glory.

Though this isn't the grimdark future of the forty-first millennium, the future of The Naked Sun isn't very bright either. In the distant future, many planets besides Earth have been colonized by humans, known as spacers, who have far surpassed their homeworld in every regard. Earth, now a place where humans live underground in massive bunker cities (and who hate robots) has been in a downward spiral for a long time. It is here where we meet Detective Elijah Bailey, who has been requested from the the far-flung, insular mechanized world of Solaria to investigate the murder of one of their own, made all the stranger because they despise personal contact (and this is putting it lightly). Elijah is in many ways a traditional detective, and a normal human as well, meaning he has a strong dislike of robots, spacers, and a crippling fear/reaction to open spaces and the outdoors. He's somewhat hard to like at first, since even though this is his second mission with Olivaw, Bailey takes nearly every effort to be a jerk to him, constantly mocking him for his limitations. However, once Bailey gets stuck in this web of intrigue, he rapidly becomes far more likable as he begins to make connections and overcome his fear of the open air. By the end of the book, Bailey has fully overcome his fear, and returns to Earth with a new lease on life, and idea of what the future should be, which was something I very much liked, especially as it was organically built up over the course of the book in small steps, all starting just as a way to mess with Olivaw. That's not all though, the main cast of spacers were all entertaining, engaging, and intriguing, being in a nutshell a people with crippling OCD and germaphobia. Though by all means and measures eccentric, the people of Solaria do still feel like humans, people you could meet on the street today (though with some key differences of course), and this added a strange feeling of timelessness to the work.

But is The Naked Sun worth reading? I'd say so, for on top of being just great science fiction in the far-flung future, it's also just great escapism. Who hasn't at one point wanted to be a detective, and a detective (one of the first in decades) who crosses space to solve a crime on a distant planet no less? Hell, if that doesn't grab you, there's also the philosophical element in regards to the exploration of the Three Laws, which I didn't expect to encounter, but was a welcome addition. It's a fun, fast read, with unexpected (but not illogical) twists and turns throughout, and one that I loved to read.