Storyline: 2/5 
 Characters: 3/5 
 Writing Style: 3/5 
 World: 4/5 
 There is something highly ambitious in conjuring up an entirely new society with entirely new social problems and engaging in social criticism of that hypothetical society. I read this as a thought experiment - a thought experiment for problems and conditions which we are not currently experiencing (and were not experiencing in the 1950s). These probably wouldn't even be problems in the foreseeable future. Why do it then? To see what the results of the experiment are, of course! I was pleasantly relieved to find the story wasn't an allegory for racism, imperialism, despotism, etc. Asimov just wanted to see what turned up. 
 I still find these murder mysteries a little hokey, and our main character's internal monologues and choices are often melodramatic. To the extent that the novel felt dated it was in that it had a quaint sort of earnestness about the characters, interactions, and dialogues. That actually is not at all an unwelcome atavism. Also, I couldn't decide if the construction of the main character was brilliant or highly problematic. The character is too good and wholesome to have been an antihero. But he was also deeply flawed (view spoiler)[Elijah Baley, for instance, was highly insensitive and uncompromising when he interacted with others on Solaris. When he watched the holonovels of the planet to learn about the culture, he concluded that they didn't contain anything about the culture since they were obviously nonsense. Also, Baley's decision to curtly command the robots with the term "boy!" had to have included a pejorative connotation for Asimov (given when the author was writing), yet it was treated entirely innocently by all involved. (hide spoiler)]. I'm apt to give Asimov credit for being too smart to do these things accidentally. That said, then these all were supposed to show us that the main character was ignorant of a lot of his failings - was, therefore, very human. If so, then Asimov is quite a bit too subtle for his own good.