No individual robots appear, nonetheless Asimov said: What interests me most about "Mother Earth" is that it seems to show clear premonitions of the novels Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, which I was to write in the 1950s.

A historian looks back and sees the problem beginning a century and a half earlier, when Aurora got permission to "introduce positronic robots into their community life."

No date is given, but fifty years before the story starts, the Outer Worlds established an immigration quota against incoming Terran citizens.

Now war appears likely, and there are rumors that Earth has developed an unknown weapon, code-named the "Pacific Project."

This is in part to force Earth to make necessary reforms including the use of robots, hydroponic agriculture, and population control.