Isaac Asimov's Inferno

Isaac Asimov's Inferno is a science fiction novel by Roger MacBride Allen, published in 1994. It is set in a future where robots are governed by the Three Laws, the rules Asimov wrote that make a machine obey a person and stop it from doing harm.

The Second Law requires a robot to obey an order unless obeying it would conflict with the First, and the existence of a robot outside that arrangement is the problem at the centre of the book. Caliban has no need to obey and no reason to respect human beings, which is why suspicion falls on him when a key politician is murdered.

In a universe that is protected by the Three Laws, the book says, human beings are safe, and the exception to that rule is the thing everyone has reason to be afraid of.

The stakes are larger than one death: Caliban is an argument about what a robot's place in society should be, and there is a possibility that he will lead the New Law robots into a rebellion against the people who built them. The novel is a sequel to Caliban, and it was written with Asimov's cooperation and blessing.