Robot Visions

By: Isaac Asimov

Narrated by: Graham Winton

From the writer whose name is synonymous with the science of robotics comes five decades of robot visions - 36 landmark stories and essays, plus three rare tales - gathered together in one volume.

Meet all of Asimov's most famous creations: Robbie, the very first robot that his imagination brought to life; Susan Calvin, the original robot physchologist; Stephen Byerley, the humanoid robot; and the famous human-robot detective team of Lije Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw, who appeared in such best-selling 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.

©1990 Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc. (P)2015 Recorded Books

Pronunciation of some words

hWhat, hWhy, hWhere. Really annoying. There where other smaller annoyances.
Otherwise, good performance of the book.

absolutely worth for just the essays

A few new shorts, but mainly even without them, the essays were worth the listen.

More relevant today than ever

Asimov's amazingly prescient robot stories were written 35 to 70 years ago. They are not only still relevant today but even more so now that A.I. has renewed concerns over advanced computer/robot technology. Software didn't develop in the same way Asimov envisioned; I don't think the 3 Laws can be hardwired into a robot in a way that can't be bypassed or hacked. Or even simply ignored as, in the next few years, it will surely become ridiculously easy to connect a robot purchased for a mere pennance at Walmart to the Internet and ChatGPT, and send it out into the world on any set of orders a teenager or terrorist desires. With zero safety restrictions. Physical robots themselves may not even be necessary, as software alone could take over a machine of almost any kind and do whatever damage its programmer wills it to, In his latter essays (some included in this collection), it seems Asmimov himself saw this starting to happen. He even noted that the amazing positronic brains of all his robots were already woefully antiquated, and that was in the 1990s! We're 35 years past that as of this review... What is to come, I'm not sure even the Masters of Science Fiction can or could have predicted. Well, Arthur C. Clark did a pretty good job. :)

Foresight

The Stories are great but the essays are the real jewel of this crown collection

I learned a lot about Asimov's robots in his essay

several essays from 1950s to 1980s explained a lot about Asimov's and his ideas about robots. Asimov's fans read.