The Naked Sun was published by Doubleday in 1957. Elijah Baley, the agoraphobic Earthman detective, is sent to Solaria — a Spacer world where twenty thousand humans live on vast estates, each attended by thousands of robots. Solarians never physically meet; they interact only through holographic “viewing.” In this society of extreme isolation, a man has been murdered by a blunt instrument — which requires physical presence. Every Solarian has a seemingly unbreakable alibi: they were alone, as always.
The novel inverted the claustrophobia of The Caves of Steel: where Earth’s cities were overcrowded, Solaria was pathologically uncrowded. Asimov used the contrast to explore two dysfunctional extremes of human social organisation — total crowding and total isolation — and to argue that neither represented a healthy human future.
Solaria as Prophecy
Solaria — where people never meet in person, communicate only through screens, find physical proximity unbearable, and are attended by robotic servants — reads today as an astonishingly prescient description of the extreme end of digital society. Written in 1957, before television was ubiquitous, the novel anticipates video conferencing, remote work, social isolation, and the psychological consequences of eliminating physical human contact. Asimov could not have known about Zoom or social distancing, but the dynamics he described — a society that has mistaken convenience for civilisation — resonate with uncomfortable precision.
The Murder Mystery
The locked-room aspect is integral to the science fiction premise. On Solaria, murder should be impossible: no one is ever in physical proximity to another person. The robots cannot kill (First Law), and the humans have been conditioned to find physical presence intolerable. Yet someone has bludgeoned a man to death. Baley must solve the mystery while overcoming his own agoraphobia (Solaria’s open spaces terrify him) and navigating a society whose customs — particularly regarding personal space and physical contact — are the inverse of everything he knows.
Baley’s Growth
The novel is also a character study. Baley, who in The Caves of Steel was prejudiced against robots, must now confront an even deeper prejudice: his fear of open spaces. His assignment to Solaria forces him outdoors — under the “naked sun” — and his gradual accommodation to open air and sunlight parallels his growth as a detective and as a human being. By the end, Baley has expanded his tolerances in both directions: he can work with robots and walk under open sky.
Collecting The Naked Sun
First edition (1957, Doubleday, New York): Boards with dust jacket.
Approximate market values:
- Fine/Fine in dust jacket: $1,000–$3,000
- Near Fine/Very Good jacket: $400–$1,000
- Signed first edition: $2,000–$5,000
- Without jacket: $50–$150
Value trajectory (2016–2026): Approximately 2× appreciation. The Robot novels have benefited from the broader Asimov market uplift.
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate to strong. Fine/Fine copies should reach $4,000–$8,000. The novel’s prescient treatment of technological isolation may increase its cultural relevance.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this a sequel to The Caves of Steel? Yes, a direct sequel featuring the same protagonist (Baley) and his robot partner (R. Daneel Olivaw). It can be read independently but is richer in the context of the series.
Why is Solaria so isolated? Solarians deliberately chose maximum physical separation as a social ideal. Each person lives alone on a vast estate, attended by robots. They reproduce through artificial insemination and raise children in communal centres. Physical contact — “seeing” rather than “viewing” — is taboo. Asimov presents this as a logical endpoint of certain tendencies already visible in 1957 suburbia.
How does the Solarian murder connect to the broader Robot series? The resolution of the mystery depends on understanding the Three Laws of Robotics and their implications for human-robot interaction. Solaria reappears in the later Robot novel Robots and Empire (1985), where its extreme isolation has produced even more disturbing consequences.