part V contains stories about "powell and donovan" which is a team of space cowboys going on various adventures around the solar system, and interacting with robots, as they do. if r2d2 and c3p0 are typical asimovian robots, these are your solo and chewbacca. and, i'm not the first person to figure that out.

lucas inverted the relationship, though. while solo is a spitting image of the dumbard in the group (donovan), the smart one, powell, was replaced by the wookie. replacing the smart one in the team with an incomprehensible ball of fur is really typical of the dumbing down in science fiction that lucas is responsible for. but, i'm just here to observe, i'm not here to condemn.

so, that's what these stories are, and you will no doubt instantly recognize hans solo in donovan, if you're under the age of 65.

asimov had previously tried this formula out with the callistan menace and would pick it back up again in his robot novels.

- first law: this is written as a kind of a fishing tale, and is a later piece that's not meant to be taken seriously.

- runaround: we're into the classic robot series with this. while the story itself is really empty plot written strictly for young minds, it also introduces the three robot laws for the first time, and is therefore of clear historical interest. it's a fun adventure story for kids featuring the duo of donovan and powell working through some robot law deductions, but there's no deeper allegory or purpose underneath it.

- reason: the point asimov is making is that belief is not important, what's important is evidence. so, so long as the robots obey the laws and run the station, it doesn't matter what they actually believe, or whether what they believe is true or not. in the end, asimov even articulates the truth that religion is a powerful tool of control, to make a slave society function for the real masters, in this case the humans. there are strong undertones of marxism here, and his idea that meaningful revolution and self-ownership is impossible in the face of the effects of religion as a tool of control. but, asimov has a wide brush here - the prophet seems to be a parody of calvinism, he goes after kant (in his view that reason is superior to evidence), he asserts the supremacy of empiricism over reason, he ridicules the deist descartes...

so, is asimov right that it doesn't matter what the slaves think, so long as they do what they're programmed to? i think you're missing his sarcasm, basically. i mean, that might be a reasonable deduction to make, if you're an elitist aristocrat that doesn't care about individual freedom (and asimov was an elitist, but not of the aristocratic mindset). i realize there's a prominent false reading of this, but that false reading would be pretty uncharacteristic of asimov - that false reading is missing the sarcasm. as mentioned, asimov's point is that belief is not valuable - facts, truth and evidence are valuable. and, his point is that dumb people can be easily manipulated into being controlled, by being led to believe things that are not true.

but, if you want to embrace the false reading, that's up to you. it doesn't matter, really.

- catch that rabbit: this wouldn't appear to be about robots at all, really, but about quantum physics. maybe god does or does not play dice, but he seems to get bored when we're not paying attention. as i'm discovering is the case with much of asimov's work, this just seems to be a nerdy, sardonic joke.