"Me, I didn't care for the Robot/Caves setting. Nevermind purely intellectual and scientific objections, I don't think human beings can ever be that bland. Some are too smart, some too stupid; either way it keeps things from becoming so staid. Just watch an episode of Cops. I kept reading the books (including quite a few of the later books written by others) thinking they'd get "better" somehow (silly me)."
I agree that "The Caves of Steel" is somewhat dated, it was first published in 1954. The setting, is somewhat better than that of his Foundation Novels as one for a Traveller Campaign, for one thing the area of space involves only 51 planets instead of a whole Galaxy and that is much easier to Map. The 2300 map can be used for this, just find 50 stars that are close in type to the Sun on that map. The second task is to abstract the Asimov Jump Drive. This is the same sort of drive used in the Foundation Novels. The transition through Hyperspace is instantaneous. the starship has to move a certain distance out of a gravitational well before initiating the jump. To give it Traveller-like speeds, assume the jump drives need to be charged up over a 5 day period before the jump can be initiated, this represents the amount of time that would otherwise be spent in Jump space, no jump fuel is required, you don't even need a fusion power plant, you just need a poser source that is capable of providing the Jump drive's listed EP power requirement over the 5 day period leading up to the jump, this jump charging must occur away from a planets gravitational field otherwise the jump drive loses its charge. The charging itself takes the form of 'stressing' the 'fabric' of space within the jump drive itself. Once this 'stressing' reaches a critical value the 'space' within the jump drive is released and it instantaneously forms a wormhold that swallows the starship and expels in some number of parsecs away. The most typical power plants for starships are atomic fission reactors whose primary fuel is Uranium which must be mined and processed. Uranium mines are therefore strategic assets. AI robots have been standard technology ever since the 21st century, and it is now the year 3000. The Earth has a World Government that is based in Washington DC, in essence the United States has taken over the World, each Nation is now a State and has two Senators and a number of Representatives proportional to its population, the type of government it has is socialist and everyone is guaranteed employment of one sort or another. Finding a job is not a problem, but finding the job you want could be. The presence of AI robots doesn't interfere with this since Socialist economies don't have the relentless drive toward effeciency that capitalist governments have and so there is no pressure to reduce labor costs. An AI robot can do work a human being can, but under the socialist system some jobs are reserved for humans and if this is inefficient, so be it! There are few AI robots on Earth, these robots are a recent introduction by the spacers. Roughly for every 100 humans there is 1 AI robot. The AI robots are basically of human shape, they have 2 arms, 2 legs, a torso and a head, but most of them don't look human, their skin is made out of plastic or metal. Robots that look more human are possible as is the case for R. Daneel Olivaw.
On the spacer Worlds things are different, every family has a number of household robots. I have only read the first book in the series, but I think the Spacer Worlds have a capitalist economy, but with every human an owner of working capital (ie robots) that do all the work.
Earth by the way has been demonitorized, there are jobs, but people aren't paid in Money instead they receive a 'C' rating that entitles them to a number of perks that are provided by the government. The government manufactures all the goods and provides all the services, much like the old Soviet Union used to do, it there fore is resistant to technological change and has been this way for most of the last 1000 years, I believe this development occured in reaction to the fear of job lossed due to AI robots. Robots were outlaws and the economy was later put on a socialist basis to guarantee employment while all the capitalists and industrialist fled to the stars and took their robots with them to become spacers. Some of this is conjecture on my part as I had not read all the books, but it seems to make sence to me.
One big flaw is that their are only 8 billion people on Earth, this is only 2 billion more than we have now. It does not seem to me that adding 2 billion people would require us to live in enclosed cities and cultivate yeast for food instead of traditional crops, but the book was written in 1954, and contains many good nuggets that make sence to me.
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