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A man without memory, in a city of robots gone wild. At his side, a mysterious woman whose own identity he has reconstructed, and whose memories of him may be true or false. The young man calls himself Derec. In the shattering climax to his quest he discovers the shocking secret of his true identity. Tormented by a nightmarish disease, Derec must face the genius Dr. Avery, and compel him to reveal the truth!
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
3 people are currently reading
422 people want to read
About the author
Rob Chilson
59 books3 followersI was born at home in Oklahoma, after my mother spent part of the morning hoeing in the garden. It was a pretty old-fashioned family even for that time (1945) and place. My father was a scarecrow. We subsequently moved to California, where my memories begin. I remember the first flake of snow I ever saw. (It disappeared before I got a good look at it.) Since then I've lost track of snowflakes; we moved back to Missouri (my mother's natal state) when I was eight, and I have been a confirmed Midwesterner ever since.
I decided, about age six, that I wanted to be a writer. I even wrote a couple of stories. I concluded that I was not yet ready to be a writer, so postponed it until I was grown up. At age eleven, I concluded that I now knew enough to be a writer; for instance, I now understood improper fractions. I knew, of course, that I would rarely have occasion to mention improper fractions in my stories, but I argued that my knowledge of them indicated that I had acquired a great deal of other knowledge which I could use. A sophisticated argument for an eleven-year-old. (To this day I have never mentioned improper fractions in a story.)
I decided, about age six, that I wanted to be a writer. I even wrote a couple of stories. I concluded that I was not yet ready to be a writer, so postponed it until I was grown up. At age eleven, I concluded that I now knew enough to be a writer; for instance, I now understood improper fractions. I knew, of course, that I would rarely have occasion to mention improper fractions in my stories, but I argued that my knowledge of them indicated that I had acquired a great deal of other knowledge which I could use. A sophisticated argument for an eleven-year-old. (To this day I have never mentioned improper fractions in a story.)
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 8, 2018
This feels like the weakest part of the series, barely advancing the story arc at all.
Seeing the caves of steel through Spacer eyes is a refreshing angle, but there's not much to look at.
Seeing the caves of steel through Spacer eyes is a refreshing angle, but there's not much to look at.
February 21, 2016
Not a great book, seems to be more of a 'holding' book as in it doesn't really go anywhere, both in terms of where the characters are at the start and at the end of the book and also my overall impression of the book was 200 pages of words that went nowhere.
Finished it but was not great.
Finished it but was not great.
October 26, 2023
Out of all of the epic stories I've read, These Robot City stories are wonderfully consistent, in spite of having different authors for each book. This 'Episode' brings all of the future technologies to the forefront of the story. These glimpses of what the future could ostracized likely look like .
I appreciate the detailed explanation of the Robot posotronic brain that I think, yes of course that's how that works. Even though it's not an actual thing at this point. Perhaps through these books future scientists will be able to create such a Robot. I know we're closer today than ever before.
This book leaves off with a happy ending, of sorts. At least for a day
I appreciate the detailed explanation of the Robot posotronic brain that I think, yes of course that's how that works. Even though it's not an actual thing at this point. Perhaps through these books future scientists will be able to create such a Robot. I know we're closer today than ever before.
This book leaves off with a happy ending, of sorts. At least for a day
October 21, 2021
Het wordt misschien wat vervelend, maar ook dit boek kon me niet echt bekoren. Gelezen, maar kon me niet echt bekoren. Jammer
November 20, 2020
Isaac Asimov opens the novel with an introduction to the concept of having a thriving and bustling city exist solely underground like that of Earth. Stranded in Dr. Avery’s star seeker, on a deserted space lane with no form of outgoing communication, Derec, Ariel, Mandelbrot, and Wolruf are faced with limited options. Derec, recovers Dr. Avery’s hidden Key to Perihelion on board the ship. The key is programmed to teleport to the eccentric doctor’s hideaway apartment on the planet Earth. Derec and Ariel travel to Earth in search of a cure to Ariel’s aggressively advanced disease, and a means of transport to rescue their comrades still stranded in space. They are teleported to the city of St. Louis where they forge new identities. Here they encounter for the first time the drastically different lifestyle of Terrans as opposed to the spacer and settler worlds that they are accustomed to. Arielle is diagnosed and cured of, Amnemonic Plague, however not without losing her memory in the process.
Derec grows rapidly ill due to chemfets injected by Dr. Avery before they escaped Robot City. The duo escape Earth on another Star Seeker in search of Mandelbrot and Wolruf when they are intercepted by the space pirate Arinamus. An epic space battle ensues, where Derec and Ariel are rescued by Mandelbrot and Wolruf. The reunited team then return to Robot City in search of Dr. Avery and a cure for Derec.
Derec grows rapidly ill due to chemfets injected by Dr. Avery before they escaped Robot City. The duo escape Earth on another Star Seeker in search of Mandelbrot and Wolruf when they are intercepted by the space pirate Arinamus. An epic space battle ensues, where Derec and Ariel are rescued by Mandelbrot and Wolruf. The reunited team then return to Robot City in search of Dr. Avery and a cure for Derec.
May 20, 2025
Better than the last, 3.5 stars. The experience of an Asimovian underground Earth city, but from the Spacer point of view, was interesting. Enjoyed some of the plot elements, felt others were silly. This author should have paid more attention to how the previous authors had written Wolruf, because his vocal inflection was flubbed here. These little things matter.
September 23, 2015
I don't understand this book, or rather the importance of this book to the series. I don't think it adds very much to the series and instead think it detracts and distracts. I think it's poorly written (did you know you can collect water in space for fuel for your space ship?) and the science is spurious and the concept is bad and I have no idea what the series editors were thinking when they thought about this fifth book in the six book series.
So far, Derec and Ariel have been trapped on and in Robot City for the first four books and have been desperate to escape, especially since Ariel's mysterious fatal illness finally seems to be getting worse and also because Derec wants to find the source of his amnesia. At the end of the last book, they've escaped the evil Dr. Avery with Wolruf and Mandelbrot in Dr. Avery's space ship and are heading out. In this book, they use a Key to Perihelion to transport them to somewhere, anywhere, and to their horror, they wind up on earth. Earth is a spacer's nightmare. It's beyond overcrowded. It's so overpopulated that its entire population is larger than all 50 colonized planets combined! And this is one of the stupid things about the book. When I read that, I thought, holy cow -- there must be like 100 billion people on the planet to beat out 50 other planets in some distant future. Everyone lives underground and travels underground and the cities are all underground. How many people are there? Bear in mind that this book was written in 1988. There were probably about five billion people on the planet at the time of publication. So, to my shock, Derec and Ariel were horrified to learn that earth had EIGHT BILLION people living on it!!! Oh my God! Eight billion! More than 50 planets! Um, really? How freaking stupid is that? We already nearly have that many now, just a few decades after publication of this book. Are you telling me this sci fi writer couldn't look into the future and see serious over population? What a massive moron!
Anyway, Derec and Ariel are on earth and they're overwhelmed at all the people. I mean, they are surrounded by thousands of people. Thousands. Oh my God. The horror. I can't imagine. Poor spacers. Apartments are tiny and don't include bathrooms or kitchens, so they have to share communal bathrooms and go to giant cafeterias. Additionally, earthmen hate robots, so even though Dr. Avery has one in his apartment who helps them, they can't take it out with them or it would be torn apart.
They find they're in St. Louis. They travel around, feeling claustrophobic. They get identified as spacers and some people try to attack them. They want to get out to the surface and driving trucks is one of the only ways to do so, so they take a course, but have to withdraw after their fake IDs are identified. Meanwhile Ariel's getting much worse. The only real redeeming aspect of the book is that she is hospitalized and the medical staff is able to diagnose and cure her of her plague she had gotten on Aurora. Her memories are erased, but they are able to slowly replace many of them, with Derec's help, but it takes time. Meanwhile, he's doing very poorly himself and seems to be getting sick. He keeps dreaming of Robot City. He dreams it's inside him. And then he realizes, somehow, that it is. That it's growing inside of him and that Dr. Avery did something to him that needs to be fixed only by returning to Robot City in an effort to save his life. Finally, he and Ariel are able to fly to New York City, underground (I want to know how they got the Arch of St. Louis magically underground???), and take a space ship off planet. Soon they are attacked by the same alien from the first book who had captured them, but Wolruf and Mandelbrot show up and the four of them fight him off and destroy his ship. The last paragraph of the book has Mandelbrot using the Key to take all four back to Robot City.
All that said, there's virtually nothing about Robot City in this book at all. We never see it. It's not often mentioned. We rarely see robots. We spend virtually all of our time on earth with Derec and Ariel and while it's minimally interesting, I actually got pretty bored quite soon. I thought it was filler. I thought, aside from finding Ariel's cure, which could have taken place anywhere, including Robot City, this book really had little to nothing to offer and I don't even know why it was written. I thought, as in previous books, the dialogue was stilted, the plot line was shaky, the logic was faulty, the science was pretty sad, and the entire representation of earth was beyond unrealistic. Just a poor, poor book. Since I have the last book, I'm going to read it. I think this is a somewhat poor series, not well written, but on the whole, I've enjoyed it to a certain degree, in part because it's fairly original and I appreciate that. It's also got a lot of mystery about it and I'm hoping all becomes clear in this next book. I can't recommend this book at all and even if you're reading this series, I would just skip it, because other than Ariel's cure, there's not much else here to make it worthwhile. Looking forward to the final book though....
So far, Derec and Ariel have been trapped on and in Robot City for the first four books and have been desperate to escape, especially since Ariel's mysterious fatal illness finally seems to be getting worse and also because Derec wants to find the source of his amnesia. At the end of the last book, they've escaped the evil Dr. Avery with Wolruf and Mandelbrot in Dr. Avery's space ship and are heading out. In this book, they use a Key to Perihelion to transport them to somewhere, anywhere, and to their horror, they wind up on earth. Earth is a spacer's nightmare. It's beyond overcrowded. It's so overpopulated that its entire population is larger than all 50 colonized planets combined! And this is one of the stupid things about the book. When I read that, I thought, holy cow -- there must be like 100 billion people on the planet to beat out 50 other planets in some distant future. Everyone lives underground and travels underground and the cities are all underground. How many people are there? Bear in mind that this book was written in 1988. There were probably about five billion people on the planet at the time of publication. So, to my shock, Derec and Ariel were horrified to learn that earth had EIGHT BILLION people living on it!!! Oh my God! Eight billion! More than 50 planets! Um, really? How freaking stupid is that? We already nearly have that many now, just a few decades after publication of this book. Are you telling me this sci fi writer couldn't look into the future and see serious over population? What a massive moron!
Anyway, Derec and Ariel are on earth and they're overwhelmed at all the people. I mean, they are surrounded by thousands of people. Thousands. Oh my God. The horror. I can't imagine. Poor spacers. Apartments are tiny and don't include bathrooms or kitchens, so they have to share communal bathrooms and go to giant cafeterias. Additionally, earthmen hate robots, so even though Dr. Avery has one in his apartment who helps them, they can't take it out with them or it would be torn apart.
They find they're in St. Louis. They travel around, feeling claustrophobic. They get identified as spacers and some people try to attack them. They want to get out to the surface and driving trucks is one of the only ways to do so, so they take a course, but have to withdraw after their fake IDs are identified. Meanwhile Ariel's getting much worse. The only real redeeming aspect of the book is that she is hospitalized and the medical staff is able to diagnose and cure her of her plague she had gotten on Aurora. Her memories are erased, but they are able to slowly replace many of them, with Derec's help, but it takes time. Meanwhile, he's doing very poorly himself and seems to be getting sick. He keeps dreaming of Robot City. He dreams it's inside him. And then he realizes, somehow, that it is. That it's growing inside of him and that Dr. Avery did something to him that needs to be fixed only by returning to Robot City in an effort to save his life. Finally, he and Ariel are able to fly to New York City, underground (I want to know how they got the Arch of St. Louis magically underground???), and take a space ship off planet. Soon they are attacked by the same alien from the first book who had captured them, but Wolruf and Mandelbrot show up and the four of them fight him off and destroy his ship. The last paragraph of the book has Mandelbrot using the Key to take all four back to Robot City.
All that said, there's virtually nothing about Robot City in this book at all. We never see it. It's not often mentioned. We rarely see robots. We spend virtually all of our time on earth with Derec and Ariel and while it's minimally interesting, I actually got pretty bored quite soon. I thought it was filler. I thought, aside from finding Ariel's cure, which could have taken place anywhere, including Robot City, this book really had little to nothing to offer and I don't even know why it was written. I thought, as in previous books, the dialogue was stilted, the plot line was shaky, the logic was faulty, the science was pretty sad, and the entire representation of earth was beyond unrealistic. Just a poor, poor book. Since I have the last book, I'm going to read it. I think this is a somewhat poor series, not well written, but on the whole, I've enjoyed it to a certain degree, in part because it's fairly original and I appreciate that. It's also got a lot of mystery about it and I'm hoping all becomes clear in this next book. I can't recommend this book at all and even if you're reading this series, I would just skip it, because other than Ariel's cure, there's not much else here to make it worthwhile. Looking forward to the final book though....
March 24, 2020
Interesting view of Asimov's Earth.
May 18, 2020
Hasta ahora el las aburrido de la serie
December 19, 2022
Better than #4, but still far away from the quality of #1 - now to the last one ;-)
April 8, 2015
Isaac Asimov's Robot City Book 5: Refuge (1988) 164 pages by Rob Chilson.
Derec and Ariel have escaped Dr. Avery and Robot City to find themselves on Earth. The reader gets to know what Earth is like, a few large underground cities with millions of people. So densely populated that there are still more people on Earth than on the eighty spacer worlds combined. We also find that on Earth there is a dislike of robots among most of the population.
Derec and Ariel are in Dr. Avery's apartment. Put there when they found a key of perihelion that took them there. They get help from R. David. The robot provides them with identification, ration cards, and information on how to blend in, or at least survive. They are trapped on Earth almost as much as they were trapped in Robot City. They have to search for a way off the planet, Ariel is getting sicker and needs to get some sort of medical attention, Wolruf and Mandelbrot are stuck in a spaceship around Kappa Whale and need to be rescued.
With fewer robots in this book the emphasis has shifted temporarily away from the three laws and more onto how the spacers can adjust to what Earth is throwing at them. There is still R. David, but his role is minor, being that he cannot safely leave the apartment.
Derec and Ariel have escaped Dr. Avery and Robot City to find themselves on Earth. The reader gets to know what Earth is like, a few large underground cities with millions of people. So densely populated that there are still more people on Earth than on the eighty spacer worlds combined. We also find that on Earth there is a dislike of robots among most of the population.
Derec and Ariel are in Dr. Avery's apartment. Put there when they found a key of perihelion that took them there. They get help from R. David. The robot provides them with identification, ration cards, and information on how to blend in, or at least survive. They are trapped on Earth almost as much as they were trapped in Robot City. They have to search for a way off the planet, Ariel is getting sicker and needs to get some sort of medical attention, Wolruf and Mandelbrot are stuck in a spaceship around Kappa Whale and need to be rescued.
With fewer robots in this book the emphasis has shifted temporarily away from the three laws and more onto how the spacers can adjust to what Earth is throwing at them. There is still R. David, but his role is minor, being that he cannot safely leave the apartment.
September 16, 2013
Seguimos remontando el vuelo, cambiando por completo el escenario de la saga a una Tierra superpoblada y bajo cúpulas que hacen que todo el mundo sea agorafóbico y miren con odio a los espaciales y robots. Una explicación del día a día bajo las bóvedas y como funciona una sociedad así en comparación con los demás mundos, aunque uno no deja de sentir cierta pena al saber cómo terminará en el futuro según la línea temporal de Asimov. La historia avanza algo lenta, pero sientes que no estás perdiendo el tiempo como en Cyborg, no es solo explorar el aspecto de esa Tierra sin apenas robots
August 17, 2012
I liked the way Derec and Ariel's visit to Earth contrasted with that of Baley's in the Robot trilogy.
The rest of the story was weak though. I didn't really care much about what happened until the last chapter.
The writing in this book was very sub-standard also. The characters said and thought things that made no sense and I was constantly rereading lines to figure out what was happening
The rest of the story was weak though. I didn't really care much about what happened until the last chapter.
The writing in this book was very sub-standard also. The characters said and thought things that made no sense and I was constantly rereading lines to figure out what was happening
August 26, 2016
The forte of this book is the depiction of the Caves of Steel. They are directly lifted from the Asimov originals and brought to life in a convincing way. And there is real development for the protagonist couple.
September 8, 2009
not my favorite of the series but it's interesting, mostly on a futuristic Earth
December 20, 2013
I love robots and Isaac - great robot story - spacer travel back to earth - fighting pirates - aliens and lots of robots !!!
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March 31, 2018Muy entretenido...
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews