The Robots of Dawn

The Robots of Dawn is a science fiction novel by the American writer Isaac Asimov, published in 1983 as the third of his novels about the detective Elijah Baley.

Aurora is one of the fifty Spacer worlds, settled by people who live for centuries, use robots for everything and consider Earth's population barely worth noticing. A robot called Jander Panell has been mentally destroyed, and the only person with the skill to have done it is Han Fastolfe, the roboticist whose political position depends on the accusation being disproved. Baley is sent to clear him, with R. Daneel Olivaw as his partner and R. Giskard Reventlov, an older model, as a further presence he cannot quite make out. Asimov sets the investigation inside a society of few people and many machines, and Baley has to reason about motive among beings whose lives are long enough that ordinary ambitions do not apply.

The novel follows The Naked Sun in the series, and it develops the two robots whose decisions run through the author's later books.