Mastodawn

The bit that you skip #152: John Baker – The Caves of Steel

Isaac Asimov always said that science fiction was a genre that could adapt to any tried and true genre of literature. Time proved him right and his Elijah Baley trilogy consisting of The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, and The Robots of Dawn are a concatenation of a hard boiled detective story and speculative fiction.

The uneasy relationship with robots, economic class caps, and population concerns are topics that permeate Asimov’s trilogy, and although the tropes of the crime genre are there, wooden dialogue and all, it’s a captivating read. Since my dad was a science fiction hoarder, he had copies of this trilogy and he lent me his well-thumbed copies to read when I was knee deep in the genre thanks to Verhoeven’s adaptation of Starship Troopers and a lit teacher who was obsessed with Theodore Sturgeon’s More than human. When she found out how many sci fi books my dad carried, she freaked out. They never met, though.

The BBC adapted The Caves of Steel in 1964 as part of the BBC’s Story Parade anthology. Irene Shubik, who would later story edit Out of the Unknown, loved Asimov’s work and commissioned Terry Nation (creator of the Daleks) to adapt the book. The anthology proved modern books could be adapted to TV and allowed Shubik’s Out of the Unknown to run for three series.

Sadly, as most of the BBC’s output, The Caves of Steel is wiped, now becoming another missing episode. It’s a shame, as Peter Cushing as Elijah Baley is perfect casting.

The music for Story Parade was relegated to the trusty BBC Radiophonic Workshop. For The Caves of Steel, John Baker uses his wondrous jazz education and mutates the genre to include early electronic music. It’s unsettling at first, but it really grows. Ignore the slighty cheese few seconds of the beginning and lose yourself into the futuristic grimy streets of New York, with intolerance and human greed fueling a good old plot boiler.

-Sam J. Valdés López

https://youtu.be/dy27KTVN82g?si=Reu4bcq5-0CmHobZ

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