The Caves of Steel (Robot, #1)

by Isaac Asimov

(The word “robot” is from a Czech word meaning “compulsory labor.”)

Efficiency had been forced on Earth with increasing population. Two billion people, three billion, even five billion could be supported by the planet by progressive lowering of the standard of living. When the population reaches eight billion, however, semistarvation becomes too much like the real thing.

Each City became a semiautonomous unit, economically all but self-sufficient. It could roof itself in, gird itself about, burrow itself under. It became a steel cave, a tremendous, self-contained cave of steel and concrete.

We’re forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can’t be understood. It’s what makes us men.

the destruction of what should not be, that is, the destruction of what you people call evil, is less just and desirable than the conversion of this evil into what you call good.”