Isaac Asimov

Figured that it was about time we had an Asimov thread to compete with the Heinlein one. That and I've never been crazy about Heinlein as a writer or even thought he was that great for that matter.

edited 25th May '12 4:42:01 PM by Bobdude

Hmm I like his works... especially the Foundation Trilogy and The Life and Times of Multivac.

edited 25th May '12 5:14:59 PM by Anfauglith

I'm currently reading the Foundation Trilogy and I also have the Robots book series, though I haven't read them yet. So far, it's fascinating. Quite a lot of characters to follow, but the twists and turns of the stories make it worth while.

The first book I read from him was his collaboration with Silverberg - "Child of Time". That's what got me interested in Asimov in the first place. It was a good book, worth the read.

He's a good writer in some aspects. Others...not so much.

What things do you dislike / criticize about him, if I may ask? That would be a nice topic of conversation.

His characters tend to be a bit on the flat side, especially his females. Also, sometimes his writing-by-pants nature is rather...apparent.

I rather agree about the flat characters... and yes, females tend to be even more one-dimensional, and I think the worst culprit regarding this are the Azazel stories. I also didn't really like the book that introduces Gaia to the Foundation Trilogy, but I don't remember which book it was. The Limits of the Foundation, I think? I'm not sure.

I should reread the Foundation Trilogy, I don't read it since ages.

edited 26th May '12 1:40:58 PM by Anfauglith

Yeah, although his stories are arguably more plot based, so the characters don't have to be all that memorable or well thought out.

Bobdude: Odd you should feel that way since Asimov was an admirer of Heinlein and they were friends. Different political beliefs (although if you pay attention you'll find Heinlein's politca; beliefs are harder to pin down than you think though not as hard as his religious ones) but personal friends.

As for Asimov's virtues and vices as a writer I think the shorter his format the better his work. I like his Foundation series but, especially after the original trilogy, it suffered badly from Sequelitus.

edited 26th May '12 5:03:52 PM by tricksterson

I mostly liked the sequels because it brought back the best robot ever. R. Daneel Olivaw. Fuck yeah.

edited 26th May '12 5:41:41 PM by MrAHR

I think the sequels are basically Asimov needing a paycheck and adding Daneel because of the Rule of Cool. With the exception of the damned Second Foundation Trilogy, which is not even written by him.

edited 26th May '12 7:12:30 PM by Anfauglith

According to Asimov it wasn't so much him needing a paycheck as it was his publisher wanting a payoff and pressuring him to write them. That being said, while the later Federation books are a bit uneven and not the pure classics the earlier ones are, there are definitely some cool moments there. Plus badass robot is badass.

Hello, all!

I noticed this thread about my favorite sf author and thought you might find this excerpt from the final volume of Dr. Asimov's autobiography, "I. Asimov", of interest. The book was published posthumously in 1994, and Asimov speaks more frankly than he had done in the past.

In this passage from pp. 76-78 Asimov goes into some detail about his "friendship" with Robert Heinlein and also talks about his and Heinlein's writing styles.

And remember, I'm just quoting Isaac!

edited 30th May '12 7:31:38 AM by jtphil

Interesting that he should consider Heinlein's second wife a "rock-ribbed conservative" since Heinlein himself once described her as one of only two "genuine bomb throwing anarchists" he knew. Forget who the second one was.

But then of course Asimov was speaking in from a purely neutral, objective viewpoint so who are we to doubt him?

Oh and I read Grumbles From the Grave too and didn't consider it mean spirited at all. A defensive tone yes, but not meanly so.

edited 30th May '12 1:45:00 PM by tricksterson

I have yet to read any of his fiction, but I enjoy his nonfiction.

Although his Foundation and Daneel Olivaw books are required reading my favorite is a lesser known work called ;;The Gods Themselves''. Strong reccomendation.

I have read and enjoyed a large amount of his work, but have gradually come to prefer his nonfiction to his fiction. My favourite fictional works of his are, as noted immediately above, The Gods Themselves, and The End of Eternity, which have the benefit of being somewhat atypical of his normal fictional subjects, and therefore avoiding some of the overkill that can come up when you decide to make a grand unified plot of a bunch of works not originally intended to be unified.

I also enjoy Asimov's nonfiction more than his fiction. My favorite are his essays on mathematics; He's skilled at expressing completed topics simply and concisely(I really wish I could find his essay on division by zero again). Asimov and Arthur C. Clark had an agreement that Asimov was the best nonfiction author and Clark was the best fiction author.

I'd like to add Nightfall and the Black Widower short stories as good fiction.

No, the agreement was Clarke was best at science fiction and Asimov was best at science nonfiction.

I just read the first book of Foundation. It's really a phenomenal book, in that it would have been like four books of four hundred pages each in the hands of any modern writer I can think of (and let's not even talk about Neal Stephenson.) So the clever little twists have much more agility with which to punch you in the face. But it doesn't really have much of an arc to it; it's just a series of tasty tea sandwiches of intrigue. I really thought it would end with them finding out they've gone off-plan, because they anticipated the Seldon crisis a bit too early, but no. The title of the next book does hold promise, though.

Also, Salvor Hardin is a total BAMF. I'd heard Hari Seldon was an iconic sci-fi character, and he definitely does prepossess, but the solution to the Second Crisis was easily the best of all the awesome reversals in the book.

Oh lord, I finished Foundation and Empire. Now that is the epic I was expecting. (It gets a bit Deathly Hallows-ish at points, actually - just this all-oppressive bleak-and-doom all around. Which is fitting, no?) Man, Asimov even warned me in no uncertain terms that shit was about to get hard-core, and I managed to willfully read uncertainty into it. One question, though: if the Mule was off Terminus since pretty much the moment it fell, how did he get to all those rebel leaders?

edited 29th Jul '12 3:51:03 PM by DomaDoma

Salvor Harden is indeed one of fiction's greatest characters.

Finished the first segment of Second Foundation. The wheels within wheels are getting to the gawping point, but hey, I like that in my fiction. The trouble is, it doesn't look like any of our major players are going to be recognizably human any more. If everyone is now getting by with mental jerk-arounds, then there's really not much that gets me invested in the Second Foundation over the Mule. But I guess the Encyclopedia excerpts show that humanity as we know it is still a thing, so I'll stay tuned for the last segment...

This guy is probably my favorite author ever. I've read a lot of his short stories— I, Robot, Nine Tomorrows, etc. —and whatever novels of his I could find in the school library— The Gods Themselves, Foundation, Foundation and Empire, but not Second Foundation, which annoys me to no end. (I'm sure my dad is fond of him too, seeing as he's also a biochemist.)

I'm rather partial to the Foundation series, mostly because it's the kind of story I can see myself writing— more focused on the world itself and its mythology, following different characters and stories over generations rather than a single objective.

Great short story writer, but I never got into his novels.

Despite being a huge fan of the genre, Asimov is the only one of the "big three" I like.