This is as much a murder mystery as it is science fiction - and it's also a good chunk of sociology: what sort of habits do people adopt when there are tens of billions of them on the planet, cheek by jowl? The characters are more fully realized than in some of Asimov's books that tend to concentrate mainly on plot and science — both Bailey and R. Daneel Olivaw are great characters.

I originally read this when I was 13 and I still own it years later, for once-a-decade re-reading. It's detective-story-meets-'50s-sci-fi, and the kind of book that made Isaac Asimov a great. A detective, Lije Bailey, is called from overcrowded, all-urban earth to solve a crime on the wealthy but underpopulated planet of Solaria — there are so few people there they don't have crime or cops. R. Daneel Olivaw — the "r" is for robot — is his sidekick. There's a woman involved. The murder mystery is solved, the Three Laws of Robotics (one of Asimov's classic contributions to sci-fi) are invoked... it's a period piece but still a page turner!

If you're not sold on SF and you like murder mysteries, you've found you're book. I read this years ago, and it's highly memorable. Often in science-fiction,writers fall into the trap of concentrating on the concepts rather than on the characters. Asimov doesn't and there are real relationships to be observed here. Totally worth reading.

The original robot stories from Isaac Asimov, complete with the Three Rules of Robotics. Don't even talk to me about this movie, either. It had the same name, but that was about it.