Robot Dreams (Hardcover)

Many other stories in this collection center on "Multivac," an immense computer. The name is an obvious derivative of UNIVAC, a large, vacuum-tube based computer of the early 1950s. UNIVAC became famous for predicting that Eisenhower would win the 1952 election based on early returns (against pundit predictions that Stevenson would win). That led directly to one story, "Franchise," which takes the ability to sample a small number of votes to predict a total election outcome and drives the idea to an absurd (but nevertheless interesting) extreme.

There are a variety of other stories, from ones dealing with beings without bodies to one talking about an alien medical investigator who has come to Earth to find out more about a disease. All are worth the read, and some are truly fascinating and end in very unexpected ways.

Ralph McQuarrie provides the cover illustration and several others for individual stories; they are of the style familiar to anyone who has seen original art from "Star Wars" (which he worked on). Asimov's introduction is amusing; he explains what he got right in predicting the future--and what he got spectacularly wrong. He discusses this with respect to both stories in the book (Multivac, for instance) and to other books and stories he had written decades earlier.

All in all, this book was a fun read.

Robot Visions has 7 of the 9 stories from I, Robot, 2 stories from Bicentennial Man and one unique to Robot Visions, the title story. The I, Robot and Bicentennial Man stories are all also included in The Complete Robot.

Robot Dreams, as others have pointed out, is actually a well-rounded compendium and has only a few robot stories. The title story is unique to this collection, but the three others are included in The Complete Robot (one of those is an I, Robot story).

So, the first story is from I, Robot, and the second is the newly-penned title story. The next 5 stories are from Nightfall, then comes the title story from Martian Way. Then come two from Earth is Room Enough and one from Nine Tomorrows. The next two stories are from Buy Jupiter, and then three stories from Nine Tomorrows. There follows the final story from Asimov's Mysteries, then a story that's been in four other collections, including TCR. Finally, the last two stories are from The Winds of Change.