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DrNeferio said
"I found Foundation quite boring too, although the dated technology was kind of charming. At least he had computers with visual displays. I also read Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky earlier this year, where they still use slide-rules."
What do you mean, still using? When that was written, that was all that was available. If you were really lucky you might have an adding machine. A large organization may have a few mechanical calculators that could actually do multiplication and division. They were big, they were noisy and they were expensive. Cheap four function calculators first appeared in the mid seventies. I still remember the first pocket scientific calculator, the HP-35, and it was over $300 at the time.
The technology of all sf from before the sixties will seem hopelessly outdated. Nobody anticipated the revolution that solid state electronics would create. But in the same fashion, heroines (and heroes) dying of TB seems quaint in the age of over abundant antibiotics.
Asimov, Heinlein and the others were first and foremost story tellers who told stories of the future as it might unfold from where they were looking. And for the most part, they are great stories.
Asimov didn't write
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