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Old 09-18-2012, 01:52 PM   #36
holymadness
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Quote:
Originally Posted by QuantumIguana View Post
There's no question that he was a major figure. He just wrote in an a genre that was sneered at. People still read his books, they aren't reading him just because he was historically important. He is - and was - a major figure, even if not everyone likes his books.
I'm afraid I disagree; I think the vast majority of interest in his work is historical rather than literary. As a writer he doesn't hold a candle to the luminaries of his era. People may enjoy his work; that doesn't make it good.
Quote:
No one said that. What was said was that it is no surprise that science fiction from the 1950's (again, it's actually from the 1940's) feels like science fiction from the 1950's. Someone today may judge it dates and cheesy today, but that doesn't mean that it was dated and cheesy at the time it was written, 70 years ago. There is little writing about the future that won't appear dated 70 years after it is written.
There is a great deal of science fiction that has aged remarkably well. The novels of H. G. Wells, Frank Herbert, and much of Philip K. Dick are still astoundingly fresh and relevant decades—even a century—after their publication.

I believe that because Asimov's futurist idiom focused on gadgets, alternative timelines, and theoretical political structures at the expense of developed characters and human stories, they feel frozen in time: a snap-shot of his thinking but nothing more enduring. In that way he's very similar to Jules Verne, who has not aged terribly well either.
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