From Isaac Asimov, the Hugo Award-winning Grand Master of Science Fiction, comes five decades of robot visions: thirty-four landmark stories and essays—including three rare tales—gathered together in one volume. Meet all of Asimov’s most famous creations including: Robbie, the very first robot that his imagination brought to life; Susan Calvin, the original robot psychologist; Stephen Byerley, the humanoid robot; and the famous human/robot detective team of Lije Bailey and R. Daneel Olivaw, who have appeared in such bestselling novels as The Robots of Dawn and Robots and Empire. Let the master himself guide you through the key moments in the fictional history of robot-human relations—from the most primitive computers and mobile machines to the first robot to become a man. “It’s good to have Isaac’s classic robot stories, and his commentary on them, in one handsome volume.”—Arthur C. Clarke
"Take one inventive genius indebted to the friend who saved his life; add an English aristocrat hopelessly consumed with a selfish and spiritually bankrupt woman; stir together with a Faustian pact to create the perfect woman--and voilà! Tomorrow's Eve is served. Robert Martin Adams's graceful translation is the first to bring to English readers this captivating fable of a Thomas Edison-like inventor and his creation, the radiant and tragic android Hadaly. Adams's introduction sketches the uncompromising idealism of the proud but penurious aristocrat Jean Marie Mathias Philippe Auguste, Count Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, a friend and admired colleague of Charles Baudelaire, Stèphane Mallarmé, and Richard Wagner. Villiers dazzles us with a gallery of electronic wonders while unsettling us with the implications of his (and our) increasingly mechanized and mechanical society. A witty and acerbic tale in which human nature, spiritual values, and scientific possibilities collide, Tomorrow's Eve retains an enduring freshness and edge." --Descripción del editor.