I, robot [Paperback]

Howard S. Smith (Author), Kathy Harestad (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 20, 2008

In this technothriller, a Japanese detective stumbles onto deployment of military robots. With cutting-edge technology, I, Robot is a fast read.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

In a near future overshadowed by an escalating threat between North Korea and Japan, Tokyo Police Inspector Suzuki Haruto uncovers evidence of an arms deal between Japan and Israel—a group of Japanese military robots in return for Israeli nuclear weapons and the knowledge behind their testing. Haruto is a humanized robot who must follow his rigid internal code of behavior while at the same time preventing an international disaster and falling in love. Deliberately drawing on the title of the late Isaac Asimov's classic work of robot-centered literature (I, Robot), Smith brings robots into the 21st century, incorporating today's technology while retaining the spirit of Asimov's seminal world. As both homage and a sf adventure, this title belongs in most libraries.
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Review

"...Innovative, fast-paced, and extraordinarily well-written, it's honestly better than both of those stories [Isaac Asimov's book or Will Smith's movie] put together." -- ForeWord Magazine March/April 2008<br /><br />"Clever and commendable... My main criticism is not with your book but rather with how closely the content of the New York Times these days seems to resemble the content of your book! Very scary!" -- Independent Bookstore/ ARC Readers: Jill Broderick, Tucson, AZ<br /><br />"I, robot is deftly written and will grab you from first page to last while holding links to Asimov's tale." -- May 2008 Midwest Book Review<br /><br />"Smith has written an exciting, fast-paced novel with elements that feel at times startlingly familiar. I would expect science fiction fans to enjoy this novel as much as I did." --Independent Bookstore/ ARC Readers:Elizabeth Schulenburg, Des Moines, IA

In a near future overshadowed by an escalating threat between North Korea and Japan, Tokyo Police Inspector Suzuki Haruto uncovers evidence of an arms deal between Japan and Israel-a group of Japanese military robots in return for Israeli nuclear weapons and the knowledge behind their testing. Haruto is a humanized robot who must follow his rigid internal code of behavior while at the same time preventing an international disaster and falling in love. Deliberately drawing on the title of the late Isaac Asimov's classic work of robot-centered literature (I, Robot ), Smith brings robots into the 21st century, incorporating today's technology while retaining the spirit of Asimov's seminal world. As both homage and a sf adventure, this title belongs in most libraries. --School Library Journal

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: Robot Binaries & Press (September 20, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1894689062
• ISBN-13: 978-1894689069
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,118,283 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Robots attack!, July 26, 2008

By 

Suzi Hough "The Fashion Piranha!" (San Jose, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: I,robot (Hardcover)

Let me preface this review by stating that I have not read the book by Isaac Asimov with the same title, nor have I see the movie starring Will Smith, but thanks to our modern pop culture I am well aware of the Three Laws of Robotics. I'm sure you're wondering, so I'll answer the question now: Yes, Howard S. Smith intentionally made the name of his novel "I, robot" similar to Asimov's "I, Robot" but wishes to emphasize to the reading public that in his title robot is not capitalized and is thus different.

Smith's novel is a globetrotting adventure starring Haruto Suzuki, a Japanese police inspector investigating the mysterious death of a businessman staying in a Tokyo hotel. As he begins to piece together the events leading the victim's death, he discovers a huge secret: Japan is trading fully functional, artificially intelligent robot soldiers to Israel in exchange for powerful nuclear weapons the strength of which have never been seen before. Haruto is horrified by the Japanese government's secrecy as he recalls the parallels between Japan's current actions and those that led to World War II. He decides he must bring the truth to the Japanese people, and follows the robots to Israel and Lebanon so that he can document every detail.

Haruto is a man haunted by rules. An undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive, he always tries to maintain a strictly regimented life both at home and at work. As a result, he's unpopular among his colleagues after turning in half of his police station for petty bribery, and his marriage is falling apart because he cannot sacrifice, or even relax, his rules in order to please his wife. While the AI of the mechanical robots allows them to learn and grow throughout the novel, Haruto's freeze him into rigid routines and earn him the nickname of "jinzouningen" - artificial human - from his associates.

Author Smith is clearly an intelligent guy with a story he's very eager to tell. At times his extremely technical descriptions can be tiring, especially if you are not well versed in electronics and technical jargon. Based on your aptitude the many diagrams will be quite helpful or a hindrance. (Unfortunately for me, many of the complex graphs couldn't help a bit.) Smith's fondness of exclamation points is rather overenthusiastic and his preference for short, choppy chapters (each averages between one and four pages) can leave scenes feeling incomplete and stilted, but at other times there is so much going on, often very quickly, that the quick changes are well suited to the format. This is a tale with a very large cast, and it is unfortunate that many of them are never revisited after their initial scene, so the reader is left wondering "Whatever happened to...?" The story takes a while to get moving while the end feels hasty and disconnected from the rest of the plot.

Yet this action-packed technothriller is highly entertaining and a worthwhile read for any robot fan. I'm not a huge science fiction fan - I read it, but not exclusively or even all that often - but Smith's vision for the origin of robotkind sucked me in. It is set in a very nearby future, and the delicate truces between the world's governments strikes disturbingly close to home. An unexpected delight was Kathy Hanes' accompanying images, a rare but pleasant find in any adult novel; it really is a pity that illustrations so rarely found in books now. A thick reference guide is available at the back of the book for unfamiliar terminology and unless you're a scientific mastermind, a karate champion or a connoisseur of Japanese culture, you're going to need it.

Smith clearly poured a lot of thought and love into "I, robot", and this fast read should find its way onto shelves of sci-fi fans everywhere. Perhaps they'll even place it right next to that `other' robot book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A mesmerizing and memorable techno-thriller, August 28, 2008

By 

L. A. Kane (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I,robot (Hardcover)

Ignore the recycled title and unfortunate cover art; this techno-thriller has nothing to do with Isaac Asimov's book or Will Smith's movie of the same name. Innovative, fast-paced, and extraordinarily well-written, it's honestly better than both of those stories put together.

The premise could easily have been pulled from tomorrow's headlines. Japan is threatened by an increasingly hostile North Korean regime that sinks its ships, captures its sailors, and even fires missiles through its airspace, yet finds itself constitutionally prohibited from developing offensive weapons that many in the military feel it needs to properly defend itself. Besieged by terrorists and disdained by most of the rest of the world, Israel is also in desperate straits. Losing a slow war of attrition with their numerous enemies, the Israelis make a secret deal to trade tactical nuclear weapons and technology to the Japanese in exchange for a horde of artificially intelligent, combat-trained robots. Assigned to investigate the death of the owner of an electronics company that makes parts for the androids, police inspector Haruto Suzuki stumbles across the intrigue and gets caught up in the action.

Suzuki is fascinating. Obsessive-compulsive, he possesses the drive necessary to accomplish almost anything, yet this single-mindedness encumbers his life. He is overly conscientious and obsessed with rules. When officers in his unit accept free meals from local merchants, for instance, he turns them in, ruining their careers while unintentionally accelerating his own. He makes keibhu, full inspector, by age thirty five, an extraordinary achievement. He ruthlessly hones his body, excelling in karate as well. This trait saves his life more than once throughout his globe-spanning adventures. When he meets Mara, a beautiful Israeli woman, he discovers the one thing he'd been missing all his life--true happiness. The challenge is that he is torn between his obsession to follow the "rules" and the consequences such actions would bring upon his new-found love. This relationship is convincingly written, truly romantic, and not contrived in the least.

Smith, an MIT-trained engineer, really did his homework. Cutting edge technology is explained in ways that make it readily accessible to the lay-person. Harestad's charts and illustrations help clarify things even further. Everything from nuclear technology to advanced robotics and artificial intelligence is artfully described, believable, and surprisingly exciting. The author even describes how a nuclear test detonation could realistically be hidden from satellite surveillance. There's a thirteen-page bibliography at the end for readers more interested in the technology.

There are few faults in this spectacular tome, yet there is a bit of undefined terminology. While there is a short glossary, it contains roughly a quarter of the Japanese words actually used in the text so readers can get a little lost at times. The only other drawback is that some of the martial arts sequences are described using incorrect Japanese terminology; nothing that non-practitioners would even notice, but a minor glitch nevertheless. Overall, however, I, robot is a mesmerizing read with memorable characters, great dialogue, believable technology, and wonderful action.

Lawrence Kane
Author of Blinded by the Night, among other titles

Note: This review originally appeared in ForeWord Magazine

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I, robot, September 10, 2008

By 

E Lawrence Peters (Denver, Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I, robot (Paperback)

"Howard S. Smith's I, robot" wasn't what I was expecting. Initially I thought it was going to be some kind of poor imitation of what Tom Clancy might do to "Battletech", but I couldn't have been further from the truth. At it's core is the story of a Japanese police inspector who's obsessive compulsive disorder drives him to solve a murder case with very serious international implications that ultimately affect every man woman and child on Earth. It is the best kind of Science Fiction, where the characters must deal with very real (and imminently possible in the real world) scientific developments, and their consequences. Once I started reading it I found it quite compelling, and some of it's predictions were simply staggering. I was happy to add it to my library and look forward to further works from Mr. Smith.