THE NAKED SUN
The "sun" in this story is Isaac Asimov's symbol of Man's destiny among the stars, beckoning Earthlings to leave the womb of their home planet. The protagonist, Baley, comes to realize that humanity must go forth into space or face cultural stagnation.
Using the sun metaphor as a jumping-off point, I posed Baley among the security of the trees, staring boldly at the sun--and at the call of space. The arrow is the symbol for a spaceship pointing the way outward from his heart. The robot holds the bow representing the means for using the arrow/spaceship because, as we find out later in Robots and Empire, robots are the force primarily responsible for the exodus of humanity.
The Naked Sun
Isaac Asimov (Del Rey)
A millennium into the future, two advancements have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the Galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. On the beautiful Outer World planet of Solaria, a handful of human colonists lead a hermit-like existence, their every need attended to by their faithful robot servants. To this strange and provocative planet comes Detective Elijah Baley, sent from the streets of New York with his positronic partner, the robot R. Daneel Olivaw, to solve an incredible murder that has rocked Solaria to its foundations. The victim had been so reclusive that he appeared to his associates only through holographic projection. Yet someone had gotten close enough to bludgeon him to death while robots looked on. Now Baley and Olivaw are faced with two clear impossibilities: Either the Solarian was killed by one of his robots–unthinkable under the laws of Robotics–or he was killed by the woman who loved him so much that she never came into his presence!
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