Robot Dreams

"Robot Dreams spans the body of Asimov's fiction from the 1940s to the mid-80s, and features classic Asimovian themes, from the scientific puzzle to the extraterrestrial thriller, all introduced in an exclusive essay written especially for this collection"

-Amazon synopsis

I expected this to be a collection of stories about robots because of the title, but only two are stories of robots. They are the first two , and the first is also a story of I , Robot (which the Will Smith movie is based on) . The other is "Robot Dreams " from which the book takes its title , and it 's another story about Susan Calvin robot as those _I , Robot_ but was written in the mid-80s (I , Robot_ was written 30 years earlier) . It is in the same form with the previous stories, but with a nod to the advancement of technology.
Many other stories in this collection center " Multivac " , a giant computer. The name is an obvious derivative of UNIVAC , a large computer based vacuum in the early 1950s . UNIVAC became famous for predicting that Eisenhower would win the election in 1952 based on the initial responses ( against forecasts oracle Stevenson would win ) . This led directly to a story , " franchise " which is the ability to test a small number of votes predicts an overall result of the election results and the idea of ​​an absurd (but interesting ) extreme .
There are a number of other stories that relate to beings without bodies to speak a foreign medical investigator who came to Earth to learn more about a disease. All are worth reading , and some are really fascinating and ultimately very unexpected .
Ralph McQuarrie provides cover illustration and several other of the individual stories are familiar style to anyone who has seen the original art of "Star Wars" ( which he worked on ) . The introduction of Asimov 's fun , he says that he was right to predict the future - and it has spectacularly wrong. It discusses about the two phases of work ( Multivac , for example) and other books and stories he had written decades earlier .

Overall, this book is a fun read.