Really quite interesting selection of short stories, though most (despite the title) aren't actually about robots. Many are naturally a little dated, but I always enjoy Susan Calvin, and the novelette "The Ugly Little Boy" is very affecting - my favourite, I think, of the bunch. Though it does strike me as being one of the dated stories, in the total lack of ethics shown by the experimenters. Not that all scientists are ethical today, but there is I think more of an expectation of it.

I read, recently, a collection of criticism by Judith Merril, who was writing columns on science fiction, I believe at the same time Asimov was writing these stories (1950s), and one of the things that stuck with me was her assertion that, even 20 years on or so, the human context and experience of science had changed enough to date science fiction written in the 1930s. There's more than one example of that here (Calvin destroying a dreaming robot, when today it would - hopefully - prompt discussions on preservation, artificial intelligence and what it means to be human would be another). Still, I suppose that cultural change adds, at times, another layer of interest to some of these stories, in that they're also records of attitudes that are, I trust, departing with due haste.