A 1954 Science Fiction / Crime Fiction novel by Isaac Asimov, and the first novel in his "Robot trilogy". Caves of Steel takes place in a future New York City. On the overpopulated future Earth, cities are gigantic metropolises encased under steel domes where people live in cramped conditions and subsist on processed food, never seeing the sky. In contrast, the Spacer worlds, human-colonized planets which severed political ties with Earth long ago, are utopian locales of low population, plentiful resources, massive military power, and economies based on the widescale use of robots for manual labor.