Every Version of Les Robots: a cross-media guide

Where the Three Laws were born

Isaac Asimov published his first robot story, Robbie, in 1940, and never really stopped. Through the early 1940s he seeded American pulp magazines with a series of interconnected stories built around a single, world-changing idea: what if robots were programmed, by law, not to harm us? The Three Laws of Robotics appeared in print for the first time in Runaround (1942), and the stories collected under the title I, Robot in 1950 (Les Robots in French) gave those laws a formal stage. They were not action stories. They were logic puzzles, ethics seminars, and dry comedies of error, hosted by the acerbic roboticist Susan Calvin.

Asimov kept building. Through the 1950s and into the 1980s he added four novels: a robot detective series set in a domed, agoraphobic Earth, starring Elijah Baley and his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw. And he eventually tied the whole Robot universe to his Foundation saga, making Daneel one of the longest-running characters in science fiction. The result is a body of work that has been adapted, lost, rediscovered, and reinvented across eight decades: on BBC television before the tapes were wiped, in an unfilmed screenplay that became a cult book, in a Will Smith blockbuster that kept the title and little else, and in a streaming series that finally, after years of rights disputes, brought Daneel to screen.

A timeline of Les Robots

1940"Robbie" published in Super Science Stories -- Asimov's first robot story

1941"Liar!" coins the word "robotics" in print Liar & spy

1942"Runaround" -- Three Laws of Robotics appear in print for the first time

1950I, Robot collected and published by Gnome Press

1954The Caves of Steel introduces Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw The Caves of Steel

1957The Naked Sun: Baley and Daneel on a world of four billion robots

1962ITV "Out of This World" -- "Little Lost Robot" becomes the first TV adaptation, with Maxine Audley as Susan Calvin

1964BBC "Story Parade: The Caves of Steel" with Peter Cushing as Baley; tapes later wiped, almost entirely lost

1965BBC "Out of the Unknown" begins adapting further Asimov robot stories; most episodes lost Out of the Unknown

1976"The Bicentennial Man" novelette wins Hugo and Nebula Awards

1982The Complete Robot collects 31 stories; companion volume to I, Robot

1983The Robots of Dawn expands the Baley-Daneel trilogy to Aurora

1985Robots and Empire closes the Robot novels, connecting to the Empire and Foundation continuity

1992The Positronic Man -- Asimov and Robert Silverberg expand "The Bicentennial Man" into a full novel

1994Harlan Ellison's I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay published -- the great unfilmed adaptation

1999Bicentennial Man -- Robin Williams as Andrew Martin, directed by Chris Columbus Bicentennial Man

2004I, Robot -- Will Smith and Alex Proyas; inspired by the collection, not based on it I, Robot

2021Foundation (Apple TV+) -- R. Daneel Olivaw appears as Demerzel, bridging Robot and Foundation universes on screen Foundation

The one to approach with low expectations: the 2004 blockbuster

The 2004 I, Robot is a perfectly watchable action film. It just has almost nothing to do with Isaac Asimov beyond the title and a few borrowed names. The screenplay began as an original script called Hardwired and was retrofitted with Asimov references in post-development. Del Spooner's robot-skeptic arc borrows Asimov's moral seriousness about as much as any Will Smith summer movie needs to. Enjoy it on those terms.