I, Robot

✦RBLevel 7 · Scholar ReadersUS Grade 8Lexile 820LAR (ATOS) 6.1 · First published 1950

📖 Read the book first: you need a copy of I, Robot to use this workbook. Recommended edition: Del Rey paperback, ISBN 9780553382563. Another edition works if you can follow the chapters. All recommended editions →

Subject Personalities

The real-world subjects this novel study leans into — the depth behind every Knowledge Bank and reading passage.

PRIMARY LENS

🤖 Robots, Real and Imagined

Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. and the birth of the word robot (1920), the Unimate on a factory floor (1961), ENIAC (1945), Alan Turing’s imitation game (1950), Project Cybersyn (1971) and the Luddites (1811) — the dated, checkable history behind Asimov’s machines.

SUPPORTING

📖 How the Novel Is Built

The Three Laws as a plot engine, the frame story, logic puzzles and ambiguity, the Frankenstein complex, and how Asimov’s 1950 robots compare with real machines

SUPPORTING

🔬 Science in the Stories

Selenium and the first solar cell, Mercury as MESSENGER saw it, the polygraph, nuclear rockets, radiation and the body, and why nothing outruns light.

8-Part Novel Study

Choose a Part

VocabularyReading IntelligenceLiterary ElementsThink DeeperBig QuestionAcademic Reading Challenge

Progress

PT1

Part 1 · Introduction and Robbie

A reporter meets Dr. Susan Calvin in 2057, and her first story goes back to 1998: a nursemaid robot, a girl named Gloria, and a mother who wants it gone.

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PT2

Part 2 · Runaround and Reason

On Mercury in 2015, Speedy circles a selenium pool while two engineers test the Three Laws; on a solar station, a robot called Cutie reasons his way to a faith of his own.

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