History Literature / TheNakedSun

* NakedFirstImpression: Gladia receives Elijah's first viewing in the shower, causing him to do an abrupt about-face when she steps into full view.

* NoodleIncident: Elijah mentions one case he was on where a murderer was caught only because he couldn't bring himself to break the custom of absolute silence in the communal restrooms.

* AbsurdlyHugePopulation: Inverted, Daniel tells Baley that Solaria's population is only 20,000. This gets to the point that he initially believes that Daniel mispronounced, and what he really meant was 20 million.

* BeleagueredAssistant: Klorissa Cantoro to the victim. It wasn't so much that he was a MeanBoss (by Solarian standards, anyway) as it was that the job he selected her for involves some in-person contact with children which, like all Solarians, she hates.

* BureaucraticallyArrangedMarriage: Spouses on Solaria are assigned based on genetic compatibility, and the number of children they produce is mandated according to the planet's PopulationControl. It makes sense, considering it's only for reproduction, and most Solarians are so averse to physical contact that emotional compatibility wouldn't make much of a difference ([[spoiler: Gladia and Rikaine being a notable exception]]).

* CrapsaccharineWorld: Solaria is an approximately Earth-sized planet with a total population of 20 thousand spread out evenly and a robot-to-human ratio of ''10 thousand'' robots to each human. Every individual owns a huge estate, nearly any task they don't wish to do themselves is done by robots, and there are no real physical needs that are unfulfilled. The problem? The people are so isolated from each other, that two people being in the same room is considered {{Squick}}. It is further reinforced in the sequel, ''Literature/TheRobotsOfDawn'', where [[spoiler: Gladia says that she first experienced happiness when she arrived on Aurora, which itself is a more subtle kind of CrapsaccharineWorld.]] One Spacer in the sequel (admittedly, one who only has second-hand knowledge about Solaria) even states that he would rather live on Earth (which, for the pampered Spacers, is rather close to an outright CrapsackWorld).
* CultureClash: The culture of Solaria is so different from Earth that Baley is frequently flummoxed over the most simple of things. He reflects several times that he doesn't have the context to understand what people mean, and things that are commonplace to him are exotic or even ''repulsive'' to the Solarians.
* CyanidePill: After the SummationGathering, [[spoiler: Jothan Leebig]] is about to be arrested. [[spoiler: He]] is so afraid of "seeing" another human being that [[spoiler: he kills himself]] rather than meeting another human being face to face. The irony is that it was R. Daneel, a robot, who was going to make the arrest, only nobody on Solaria had realized that Daneel was not human.

* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: It is at one point revealed that the artificial gestation facility on Solaria is manually operated because robots would keep all the fetuses and embryos alive (including the imperfect ones). This, combined with the First Law Of Robotics (robots must never harm human beings) means that in the story embryos and fetuses are considered human beings by the robots.

* TheAllegedExpert: Solaria's sole sociologist, Dr. Quemont, is self-taught and can't bring himself to be in the same room as another human being (although, to be fair, the same is true of most Solarians). And if that's not bad enough, he's never even studied basic and valuable sociology principles developed on other planets. Considering the conditions on Solaria, this is not surprising, as there would be few social problems to exert pressure on Quemont, or anyone else, to develop sociology into anything an Earthman would recognize as robust.

* FoundTheKillerLostTheMurderer: Inverted. [[spoiler: Lije catches the murderer but deliberately lets the killer go free.]]

* NakedFirstImpression: Elijah's first "meeting" with Gladia.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Johan Leebig is extremely anti-social, and voluntarily stopped all human contact when he was a small child. Of course, [[ValuesDissonance in Solaria]], that was considered a good thing and [[LamarckWasRight proof humans were evolving past gregariousness]]. [[spoiler: He dislikes human presence so strongly that he was ready to ''conquer the galaxy'' just so that Solaria and its taboo on personal presence would remain untouched.]]

* RaisedByRobots: It goes without saying that given their aversion to human contact the Solarians simply cannot bear to be around children and robots perform most child-rearing tasks. There still has to be at least one human chaperone to keep them in line, since robots aren't so great at providing discipline.

* ThreeLawsCompliant: Naturally. There are no misprogrammed robots in this book. [[spoiler: However, there ''is'' an unspoken assumption built into the laws of robotics that becomes highly significant. Law One -- "A robot may not '''knowingly''' injure a human being or, through inaction, '''knowingly''' allow a human being to come to harm." Basically, a robot can be ordered to perform an innocuous task, individually harmless, which taken along with a number of other equally harmless tasks performed by other robots or people would result in serious harm or death to a human being. The murderer carries out all of his attacks through a set of careful orders to robots that get around the first law in this way.]]

** The circumvention of the First Law in ''Literature/RobotsAndEmpire'' by [[spoiler:changing a robot's definition of human]] is hinted at in this book during the scene at the farm, when one of the robots [[spoiler:describes Earthmen as "inferior" humans, which apparently is part of its default programming]]. And though the robot denies it, Baley suspects this may have caused it to hesitate when the child it was guarding suddenly fired an arrow at him.

* FalseReassurance: Unintentionally invoked by Daneel after Baley and Attlebish get into a pissing match about the murder investigation. Caught between them, he tries to be as diplomatic as possible while still supporting Baley. His reassurance is quite genuine, but Baley sees it from another perspective.
--> "To one who knew Daneel was a robot, it was all an attempt to do a job without giving offense to any human, not to Baley and not to Attlebish. To one who thought Daneel was an Auroran, a native of the oldest and most powerful military of the Outer Worlds, it sounded like a series of subtly courteous threats."

-->'''Baley''': You poisoners on Solaria don't know dosages. Lack of experience.

* TheAllegedExpert: Solaria's sole sociologist, Dr. Quemont, is self-taught and can't bring himself to be in the same room as another human being (although, to be fair, the same is true of most Solarians). And if that's not bad enough, he's never even studied basic and valuable sociology principles developed on other planets.

* ItIsPronouncedTroPAY: Gladia's name is pronounced glah-DIE-ah.

* KnowNothingKnowItAll: Sociologist Anselmo Quemont. He has a decent understanding of Solarian society but has the same preconceptions as everyone else. He has never even heard of sociomathamatics and other such methods and studies from Earth even though they could still be used in his own society.

** As part of his work on the farm, Delmarre wanted to create robots that were sophisticated enough to understand that disciplining children for misbehaving is better for their development in the long term. As it turns out later, [[spoiler: Daneel and Giskard were already on their way to understanding this concept at a much higher level than anyone could have expected.]]

* BatmanGambit: Elijah tricks Daneel (who is trying to keep him from investigating further out of concern for his safety) into showing his robot circuits by claiming to think he's really a human impersonating Daneel, then calls in the house robots so that they'll see Daneel is also robot. This permits the robots to restrain Daneel, at Baley's order, while he continues the investigation unimpeded.

* NobleBigotWithABadge: In a science fiction sense. Security Chief Hannis Gruer is civil and professional to Elijah and is the one to realize that an Earthman mindset, with its much greater context, will stand a better chance of figuring out the murder. He also seems firmly convinced that the murder was planned by a conspiracy of people who (by modern standards) are progressive opponents of Solaria's stagnated society. [[spoiler:Ironically, the exact opposite s true, with the killer wanting to spread Solarian values across the galaxy and elevate any possible threat to being seen.]]