The Naked Sun

The Naked Sun is a 1957 novel by the American science fiction writer Isaac Asimov and the second book in his Robot series featuring Earth detective Elijah Baley; Chinese editions usually place it in the Galactic Empire series as volume 10. The story is set on the planet Solaria, where humans rely on robots for almost all labor and live in isolation from one another, finding face-to-face contact with anyone but a spouse nearly unbearable and social contact an intolerable intrusion. In this extremely alienated society, the planet's first murder occurs: a household's master is dead, and all the evidence indicates that his wife could not be the killer. Could a robot have done it? But under the Three Laws of Robotics, a robot may not harm a human being, nor may it stand by while a human comes to harm. The case thus becomes a seemingly insoluble paradox. Earth detective Elijah Baley is sent to Solaria and once again partners with the robot R. Daneel Olivaw. As an Earthman permitted into the Outer Worlds, Baley must overcome his own fear of open spaces and unfamiliar environments, enter the closed-off worlds of individual Solarians, and gradually understand how this "clean, almost peopleless" civilization operates—and what cracks it may conceal. The novel combines science fiction premises with the locked-room mystery structure of classic detective fiction, and beyond the puzzle discusses the relationships among population, technology, privacy, interpersonal distance and forms of civilization.