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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Naked Sun, won't you come, and wash away the rain, March 11, 2004
THE NAKED SUN is a witty little novel that is unmistakably a product of Isaac Asimov. Not just because of the ubiquitous robots, but because of the familiar themes that Asimov explored over the course of his decades-long career. On the surface, the novel is a science-fiction mystery story told in the author's usual enjoyable style. But by the time I reached the end of the book, I realized that Asimov had been doing something a little cleverer than his normal runaround, and upon reaching the conclusion, I immediately flipped back and started revisiting some of the earlier scenes to catch what I had missed the first time around.THE NAKED SUN starts up where THE CAVES OF STEEL left off, although you certainly do not need to have read the earlier book to enjoy this one. Earthman Detective Elijah Baley is once again teamed up with R. (for Robot) Daneel Olivaw to solve an unexplained murder. The gimmick this time is that the homicide occurred on one of the mysterious Outer Worlds, and Baley must not only act as policeman, but as an unofficial spy for an Earth government curious as to what the culture is like on those advanced, robot-dependent planets. The mystery is rather clever, although I did figure out what the murder weapon must have been before Baley did. As usual with Asimov's mysteries, I found myself enjoying the investigation more than the occasional plot logic that's thrown to the audience. In the case of this book, the storyline has some solid twists and turns, the only real flaw being that the cast of characters is so small that one could just pick a suspect at random to have a pretty good shot of correctly identifying the killer. The real star of this story is the universe that Asimov builds. The Earth is still the lagging, suspicious and enclosed world of THE CAVES OF STEEL, but now we turn our attention out to one of the colony worlds, Solaria. I could tell that Asimov was having a blast creating this society, giving us all kinds of details such as this planet's frosty relationship with Earth, its delicate relationship with other Outer Worlds, its population levels, its staggeringly high ratio of robots to people, etc. But he has even more fun giving birth to the inhabitants. He has them still as recognizable humans, but from an extremely skewed perspective. For most of the book, it's the story of these strange people and their odd customs that overpowers what is currently going on in the murder investigation. This definitely makes for an interesting read, as once we get to the end, we find that the detective portions were only secondary to the real point of the book. Often Asimov would insert little bits of social commentary into his fictions, with varying levels of success. And indeed, the summation at the end, where Baley lets the cat out of the bag and tells us what the novel has been exploring, is a little on the clumsy side. But the real triumph is how the author quietly and cunningly led us down the garden path to the end. When I opened the book to page one and found Elijah Baley nervously flying into a Washington, DC airport (by sheer coincidence I was making the same approach, albeit I started my journey in a different city than Baley had) and wishing to once again be safe indoors, I chucked to myself, recalling passages from Asimov's autobiography that discussed his legendary fear of flying and his mild claustrophilia. While reading all this stuff about people who hate flying, people who have an unnatural fear of face-to-face meetings, and people who yearn for enclosed spaces, I assumed that Asimov was doing nothing more than his usual shtick of inserting his own neuroses into his fictions (there's nothing wrong with this; it can make for very interesting reading, and it's something I particularly enjoy from Asimov). And with that assumption in place, I didn't pay much mind to what the author was actually setting up beneath the surface. So when the end of the novel rolled around and it was suddenly revealed what he had been up to this whole time, I was very pleasantly surprised. I like pulpy books that work on more than one level, and THE NAKED SUN gives us a very clever look at human fears while also providing an entertaining murder mystery. No, the characters aren't terribly deep, but the plot is a fun one and the extra bit of world building that Asimov engages in raises this book up. I like to read Asimov novels while traveling, because I find them to be a nice relaxing way to pass a few hours. Anytime the good doctor can provide me with something even better and smarter than his usual high standard of amusing, whimsical adventures, I'm a very happy camper indeed.
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by Isaac Asimov
by Isaac Asimov
by Isaac Asimov
by Isaac Asimov
by Isaac Asimov
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