Originally posted June 14, 2024. “But now, Earthmen are all so coddled, so enwombed in their imprisoning caves of steel, that they are caught forever.” When thinking about how to organize my blogging chronicle of the 99 Novels for a Locked Room Library , I settled on a randomly-generated order (with some leeway for availability) to avoid twenty straight weeks of John Dickson Carr. That means we’re kicking off the series with an unusual entry: Isaac Asimov’s science fiction murder mystery The Caves of Steel . Asimov is best known for the Robot series, followed by other influential SF like the Foundation trilogy, but he was a mystery lover who wrote some stories of his own, including the later Black Widower series (of which I’ve only read “The Cross of Lorraine”). Caves of Steel is both: a fair-play mystery follow-up to the stories in I, Robot , investigated by a human/robot duo, and the result is rather unique. The Locked Room: A pioneering roboticist is shot on his...