In essence I, Robot is a collection of indifferent short stories given a spurious novelty by mechanical transformation. But SF requires re-thinking, not mere re-clothing. In the very first story, Robbie, a nursemaid robot, is described as a primitive type, made before the secret of conferring speech on them had been discovered. Yet, inferentially, his programming must have been incredibly complex, and the inclusion of speech-mechanism would have been the merest subsidiary detail. The potentially devastating point of this particular tale, that if a child thinks of its robot guardian as human then too it thinks of its human guardian as a robot, is badly fumbled.

Hilary Corke, in his review of "I, Robot" (© British Broadcasting Corp. 1967; reprinted by permission of Hilary Corke), in The Listener, Vol. LXXVII, No. 1989, May 11, 1967, p. 629.