The Science Fiction Review Books,Robot and Foundation,Robots and Aliens Isaac Asimov’s Robots and Aliens Book 6: Humanity by Jerry Oltion

Isaac Asimov’s Robots and Aliens Book 6: Humanity by Jerry Oltion

Robots and Aliens Volume 3 book cover

This review will most likely contain spoilers for any previous books in the series, read at your own risk.

Humanity starts out with a very brief, and rather insufficient, summary of the events of the series. Derec, Ariel, Mandelbrot, Wolruf, Dr. Avery, and the three learning robots are on their way back to the original robot city. They are in for a big surprise when they enter orbit. As with previous books in this series we get to see a good portion of action, as well as discussion about what is meant to be human.

We do get to see how the whole series is tied together. For my taste, it seems that everything fits together a bit too nicely. Also, I was expecting a bit more closure toward the end. I was left with the feeling that yet another series or at least novel should fill in the gap between this series and the Tiedemann Trilogy (Mirage, Chimera, Aurora) which involves both Derec and Ariel. I’ll discuss this in more detail in my general Robots and Aliens review which will follow as I can’t do this without major spoilers for this last novel.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please prove you are a human * Time limit is exhausted. Please reload the CAPTCHA.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Post

The Currents of Space by Isaac AsimovThe Currents of Space by Isaac Asimov

The Currents of Space book cover

It is obvious after the first few chapters that this novel is on a whole different level than “The Stars, Like Dust.” There are more characters, deeper development, and various plot lines are explained through flashbacks. It seemed like Asimov spent a lot more time on this book than the last one. It is just a tad bit longer at 230 pages in my paperback copy, but quite bit more happens. There is still the medieval feel with Sark ruling Florinia and the various class struggles that go with that. (more…)

Foundation by Isaac AsimovFoundation by Isaac Asimov

Foundation book cover

It is hard to write a review about one of the most famous science fiction novels of all time, but I will try to do it justice. Asimov originally started the Foundation saga as a series of short stories for Astounding Magazine back in the 1940s. For the novelisation Asimov added the section “The Psychohistorians” to precede the original 4 stories that were published in the magazine. For those reading along with me in chronological order, most of this first story is covered in Foundation and Chaos. (more…)

Extraterrestrial Civilizations by Isaac AsimovExtraterrestrial Civilizations by Isaac Asimov

Published 39 years ago in 1979, Isaac Asimov discussed the possibilities of finding intelligent life in his book Extraterrestrial Civilizations. This has been on my reading list for quite a long time, but I just now got the notion to mark it off. Having read literally all of Asimov’s fiction, I thought it was time to read more of his non-fiction. Unwittingly, I finished this just a week or two before his birthday, which by the way was 99 years ago today!

I was thinking Extraterrestrial Civilizations would be a discussion on what civilizations might be like when if/when we discover them, or they discover us. It turned out to be more of a thought experiment, methodically laying out probabilities based on list of assumptions. Most of these assumptions were made with what scientific knowledge there was available at the time. Asimov was very careful to speckle the book with asterisks noting that if certain assumptions would change in the future, the predictions would be changed or invalidated. (more…)