I, Robot

I'm reading I, Robot by Issac Asimov. This book is not that long (like 200 pages) and maintains a middle diction throughout. Asimov skips from story to story, but holds the book together with the narrator Dr. Susan Calvin, the aging chief robopsychologist of U.S. Robotics and Mechanical Men. This format is similar to Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, where the story line skips forward time, sometimes by hundreds of years, but is always based around the planet Terminus and it's Foundation. In spite its brevity, I, Robot accomplishes far more through commentary on the social issues of Asimov's time, and in the abstraction of a potential future scenario, than the top sci-fi novels from the past several years combined. The 1940's and 50's, during which I, Robot was written, were a significant time for the advancement of civil rights. Asimov uses robots to symbolize African Americans; by examining the questions "What constitutes sentience?" and "Does sentience necessitate treatment as a human?" , Asimov hopes to convince the reader that the robots of I, Robot are sentient and therefore human (or should be treated as humans). By suggesting that a being, of equal intelligence and value to a human, that is subservient to humans should be considered a human, he attempts to persuade 1950's society to accept african americans as equal to european americans. This abstract social commentary is common in science fiction and is substantially more effective than any amount of marching, occupying, or viral video making because it removes the issues from our reality and places them in a foreign universe where they can be observed objectively.