There are many differences between the world of today and the world of Caves of Steel. One of these differences is the cities. What we consider a city in this day and age, is no where near the size in population or land mass. New York City in Caves of Steel has a population of about 8 billion and encompasses what we know as New Jersey, Philadelphia and Connecticut, while New York City we live in has a population of 8 million and boarders those three states. Even though this sounds impressive it is one of their big problems and one of our major concerns of the future. I am talking about over population. Even though they have controlled and limited child births. They are still running out of resources such as land and food. They live in huge apartment like complexes that are sized to just fit the person or people living in them, they were created for efficiency and they are still running out of room. The food they eat is mostly synthetic and it is rationed out so people don’t starve because even with synthetic food they still are running out of food. Even though these are two very different worlds they face some of the same problems and even though we are not at that point yet but Caves of Steel in some respects can be a very real and bleak future for us as a race, if something is not done by us soon to change the path we are on.
As I was reading Caves of Steel I was put into the mind set of the spacers were arrogant and the robots were just machines. In the beginning of the book space town was portrayed as a city lf the elites of the aliens and they seemed so much better than humans and they thought that as well. The best example of this is when Baley enters space town for the first time and he has to go this quarantine procedure. He had to take a shower and they took his blood to check for diseases, with everything we knew from the start of the book lead us to believe that this was due to the fact that humans were dirty. But to me there was a turning point for me. In the turning point my opinion of the spacers changed. This turning point was when Baley met Dr. Fastof. This was a turning point to me because he explained what the spacers wanted with Earth and the human race but also why they never come down to Earth and why when Earthmen come to space town they have to go through the quarantine process and it because they are afraid of diseases from mankind. I just thought that it was humbling for the spacer to tell this to a human and I think Baley thought so to or else I don’t think he would have considered the doctors argument so easily.
