If the central puzzle of the murdered Spacer scientist in The Caves of Steel hooked you—and you enjoyed watching Elijah Baley pick apart clues alongside the hyper‑capable R. Daneel—then you’ll click with Lock In. FBI agent Chris Shane and their bulldog partner Vann unravel a killing that hinges on telepresence tech and neural networks, forcing them to question witnesses’ bodies and alibis much like Baley has to reframe evidence around robot capabilities and the Three Laws. It’s a crisp, tech‑savvy mystery with the same satisfying clue‑trail momentum you loved in Spacertown and the City corridors.

If what stayed with you was Baley and Daneel’s grudging partnership ripening into respect—across suspicion, riots, and City prejudice—this gentle novella scratches the same itch from a different angle. Tea monk Dex meets the robot Mosscap, and their rambling conversations echo Baley and Daneel’s best scenes: probing purpose, personhood, and what humans actually need beyond enclosed security. Where Baley learns to see beyond anti‑robot fear and Daneel’s literalism, Dex and Mosscap learn to truly listen. It’s quieter than chasing Enderby’s clues, but it delivers that warm click of a bond earned step by step.

If the stratified worlds of the enclosed Cities versus Spacertown fascinated you—the ration lines, status anxiety, and "Medievalist" backlash beneath the steel domes—Le Guin’s classic is a richer, deeper dive. Following physicist Shevek between an anarchist moon and a hierarchical planet, it examines how systems shape people as keenly as Asimov’s moving sidewalks and communal kitchens do. Like Baley’s case revealing how scarcity, fear of open spaces, and status drives a murder, The Dispossessed turns personal choices into a precise X‑ray of inequality and ambition.

If Daneel’s uncanny humanity and the ethical knots of the Three Laws drew you in—especially the moments where Baley questions what empathy, duty, and personhood really mean—PKD’s novel goes straight for the jugular. Bounty hunter Rick Deckard tracks rogue androids that mimic humans almost as well as Daneel does, and every encounter tests the boundaries Baley kept prodding in interrogation rooms: can a programmed being have feelings, rights, or moral weight? It’s a tense pursuit layered with the same philosophical static that hummed through Spacertown’s labs.

If you liked how Baley’s inquiry is constrained by the City’s taboos—agoraphobia, anti‑robot hysteria, and the political firewall around Spacertown—this novel makes those constraints the mystery. Inspector Borlú investigates a murder across two interwoven cities whose citizens must "unsee" each other, a cognitive discipline as rigid as the domed protocols Baley navigates. As with Enderby’s scheme hiding in plain sight, the solution demands grasping how society’s rules filter reality itself. It delivers that same gratifying click of insight, only with an even sharper intellectual edge.