I, Robot - Describe the environment

At first glance, you could think this book is a book about the future. And even when you've read the introduction of the book, you would probably still believe that it takes place in the future. This is because the book is a collection of shorter stories about what happened with the world until it became what you read about in the introduction (year 2057). The first plot, about Gloria who chooses a robot instead of real friends, takes place in 1998. The second plot, about two men in a mining-facility on the planet Mercury, takes place in 2015. I guess you could say that the book takes place in some kind of parallel universe, similar to ours (the author names cities that exist in this world) where the world uses robots as an aid in the everyday life, whether it's as a housekeeper or if it's used for gathering minerals on Mercury.

Even though the author doesn't explain the environment as throughly, you get the feeling of that the world is dull and boring. That there's not much happiness around. If this is caused by the robots taking over, I can't answer.

"And it's even worse these days when it comes to robots. New York has just passed an ordinance keeping all robots off the streets between sunset and sunrise. " - page 11.

And to explain how Isaac Asimov quickly describes the environment (in a good way), here's a quote.

"'This must be an unusual area,' he said. 'The general albedo of Mercury is low and most of the soil is gray pumice. Something like the Moon, you know. Beautiful, isn't it?'" - page 40.