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Page 105
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It's healthier, better. The troubles of modern life come from being divorced from nature. Read up on the Coal Century sometime.
In these references, of course, Asimov is referring, as well, to our own attitudes toward the past, as Poe was in "Mellonta Tauta."
In The Caves of Steel, as in well-written science fiction of all kinds, language must constantly be inspected for surprises and reinterpretation. Baley notes, for instance, that there are no expressway directions to Spacetown. He explains why almost immediately: "if you've business there, you know the way" and "if you don't know the way, you've no business there." In a related logical process, the novel raises an aspect of Spacer attitudes that infuriates Earthmen. Earthmen are not allowed into Spacetown except singly and then only when thoroughly cleansed and decontaminated as if they were dirty and diseased. Later this business is turned around and inspected from the other side. Earthmen haven't changed, but Spacers have; like Wells's Martians, they have eliminated infectious diseases and contact with Earthmen might be fatal.
The Caves of Steel contains the kind of science-fiction wit that Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth displayed to such good advantage in their collaborations (beginning with The Space Merchants) and that Pohl continued in his own work. Novels and short stories are "viewed," for instance, which suggests a reevaluation of the customs and literacy of a society and linguistic development in general. A reference is made in The Caves of Steel to "whole yeast bread," and Baley remembers when he took his son to the zoo and they saw cats, dogs, and the wonder of sparrows flying.
At one point Asimov describes the natural solariums at the uppermost levels of some of the wealthier subsections of the City:
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. . . where a partition of quartz with a movable metal shield excludes the air but lets in the sunlight. There the wives and daughters of the City's highest administrators and executives may tan themselves. There a unique thing happens every evening.
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Night falls.
Asimov moves on from that revelation about a world in which the fall of night can be a unique event (and is, no doubt, a personal allusion to his most famous single story, "Nightfall") to an analysis of those habits of humanity that can be changed and those that cannot.
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Much of the earlier habits of Earthly society have been given up in the interests of that same economy and efficiency: space, privacy, even much

 
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