I have been the fan of this legendary science fiction writer ever since I read my first English non-academic book, The Robot Vision. My feelings for his work, specially in this area, are beyond my vocabulary. That was also when I realised my penchant for science fiction genre in relatively new reading habit. My belief are further reinforced when I read his second book, a novel this time, The Caves of Steel. He is just amazing! Isaac Asimov was born in Russia and lived in USA - between 1920-1992. He started writing at the age of 19 on his favourite topic, the Robots. Actually, he is credited with other science fiction books as well, but I love him for his robot stories. For a person like me who prefers logic, mystery and suspense to romance and thrills, his books are just perfect. Isaac Asimov is also considered first person to use word "robotics" in print. Not only that, his harmless and ingenious creation of foundation of his robotic stories still, and will continue to guide real scientists in their advances in this direction. He was the first person to propose The Three Fundamental Rules of Robotics. He loves to quote them in his books, and myself will present them here.
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where that would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
As you can see, these rules are simple but fundamental, and exceedingly amazing if you see his ingenuity in his use of them. His most of stories are just about various consequences of these laws and their precedence, without going into too much of technicalities, which anyway would be nonsense since, after all, it is science fiction. Of course, just to make things sound big, he claims robots to be made of "posistronic" brains. After reading his two collections of short stories - The Robot Visions and The Robot Dreams - I am going to "predict" the future of world as foreseen (or imagined, if you wish) by Isaac Asimov. Some of which may be imaginable now or simple enough, but remember he wrote these stories in 1950s when the state of science was quite different. And if you have read Alvin Toffler's Future Shock then you must be well aware of the fact that rate of change in current society is just awesome. If you have not, it tells you what I have just stated in last sentence! All right then.
Moon will be habitated, so will the Mars and Saturn! Robots will develop from humanoid mute chunk of metals to anthropomorphic geniuses which can't be differentiated from humans (except, of course, three laws still holds)! From a machine to do its job to creative, imaginative and emotional ones! Size of computers will shrink from miles (remember in 50s when he wrote it computer's were huge) to nothing, or from Multivac to Planetry AC to Microvac to Galactic AC to Universal AC to Cosmic AC - as Isaac Asimov likes to call them - omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscience! Ever intelligent robots will strive to be humans and world will be single country! Of course, what else but USA! There will be still be portions of humanity against use of robots what the movie Artificial Intelligence portrays as flesh traders!
In the end, I would like to mention that you would fathom his amazing work only after you read them. My little analysis above is nothing but my homage to such great writer.