Eric's initial idea had been to do Tales of Mystery Volume II, but by this stage they had changed record labels and the new record label was unwilling to have Volume II where they did not have Volume I. Another writer who had greatly inspired Eric was Isaac Asimov whose 'I, Robot' was one of many science fiction masterpieces Eric devoured at that stage. The original idea was to base the work on Asimov's stories, but unfortunately Asimov had granted rights to a TV/ Film Company from 10 years before which prevented him from granting permission. Eric recalls a very pleasant conversation with Isaac Asimov who was extremely friendly and enthusiastic about the idea, but there was nothing he could do. Eric wrote the album using a similar title (on which there was no copyright) but dropping the comma and with the lyrics completely unrelated to Asimov's writing, although there was a loose robotic connection.

The album I Robot to some extent looks at the questions and the extent to which as human being we may or may not be pre-programmed and act in a robotic fashion as well as the dangers of uncontrolled development of artificial intelligence.

The song 'Some Other Time' came about because when Alan asked Paul McCartney to read a line of poetry for the Tales of Mystery album in return for a favor Alan had done him, Paul's response had been 'Some other time Alan, some other time' and this gave Eric an idea for the song.

'I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You' was really the breakthrough airplay recording which got a tremendous amount of exposure, especially on American radio.

The I Robot album came out at a very fortuitous time, unknown to any of us, as completely unplanned, the album (with a robot on its cover) hit record stores in the US the same week as Star Wars was released and suddenly robots were all the rage and the Project was the only album being featured with a robotic cover.