Editing I, Robot (section)

==Overview==
The stories are woven together by a [[framing narrative]] in which the fictional Dr. [[Susan Calvin]] tells each story to a reporter (who serves as the narrator) in the 21st century.  Although the stories can be read separately, they share a theme of the interaction of humans, [[robot]]s, and [[morality]], and when combined they tell a larger story of Asimov's fictional history of [[robotics]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Beauchamp |first=Gorman |date=1980 |title=The Frankenstein Complex and Asimov's Robots |journal=Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal |volume=13 |issue=3/4 |pages=83–94 |jstor=24780264  }}</ref>

Several of the stories feature the character of Dr. Calvin, chief [[robopsychology|robopsychologist]] at [[U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men]], Inc., the major manufacturer of robots. Upon their publication in this collection, Asimov wrote a [[framing sequence]] presenting the stories as Calvin's reminiscences during an interview with her about her life's work, chiefly concerned with aberrant behaviour of robots and the use of "[[robopsychology]]" to sort out what is happening in their [[positronic brain]]. The book also contains the short story in which Asimov's [[Three Laws of Robotics]] first appear, which had large influence on later science fiction and had impact on thought on [[ethics of artificial intelligence]] as well. Other characters that appear in these short stories are [[Powell and Donovan]], a field-testing team which locates flaws in USRMM's prototype models.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Portelli |first=Alessandrro |date=1980 |title=The Three Laws of Robotics: Laws of the Text, Laws of Production, Laws of Society (Les Trois Lois de la Robotique: lois du texte, lois de la production, lois de la société) |journal=Science Fiction Studies |volume=7 |issue=2 |pages=150–156 |jstor=4239326 }}</ref>

The collection shares a title with the then recent short story "[[I, Robot (short story)|I, Robot]]" (1939) by [[Eando Binder]] (pseudonym of Earl and [[Otto Binder]]), which greatly influenced Asimov. Asimov had wanted to call his collection ''Mind and Iron'' and objected when the publisher made the title the same as Binder's. In his introduction to the story in ''Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories'' (1979), Asimov wrote:

{{Blockquote|It certainly caught my attention. Two months after I read it, I began "Robbie", about a sympathetic robot, and that was the start of my [[Positronic brain|positronic]] robot series. Eleven years later, when nine of my robot stories were collected into a book, the publisher named the collection ''I, Robot'' over my objections. My book is now the more famous, but Otto's story was there first.|Isaac Asimov (1979)<ref name="intro1979">{{cite book |title=Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories |year=1979 |first=Isaac |last=Asimov }}</ref>}}