Robots and Empire

1986

A number of centuries have passed since Elijah and Daneel first teamed up but the passage of time matters little to Daneel or Giskard, or even the Spacer woman Gladia, one time lover of Elijah.

When the spacer world of Solaria goes silent the galaxy is alarmed and ships from both Spacer and Settler worlds rush to see what aid they could offer (and see what robot technology they could ... acquire). Gladia, still in exile on Aurora, is co-opted onto a Settler investigation team when all the previous teams also stop reporting...

During this trip, Gladia finds an appetite for politics and persuades the captain of her ship to conduct her on a tour of the galaxy, climaxing on Earth where the final desperate plot of the declining Spacers against Earth is unearthed. Can Daneel or Giskard work their way round the Three Laws even with Giskard's special abilities in time to counter the dastardly plot.

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Doctor Asimov's use of Three Mile Island as the the site of the denouement was rather spoilt by the fact that Chernobyl in the fUSSR actually fitted the clue far better by the time the book came out.

This is meant to tie the Robot stories into the Empire/Foundation series where the Earth is a radioactive slag heap. This was rather contrived - in the earliest of his Empire books it is fairly obvious that the radioactivity is due to war, but current history makes total nuclear war (hopefully) unlikely.

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