09-18-2012, 11:06 AM | #16 |
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Even when we were reading Asimov back when he was writing it we all knew that he lacked depth of characterisation. However, we loved him for the plots and the ideas and the way his stories leapt off the page.
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09-18-2012, 11:08 AM | #17 |
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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.
I quite enjoy some of Asimov's work, but I don't think I'd really waste much time defending the quality of his prose. I was just thinking the other day that Asimov's The Gods Themselves and Ursula K Le Guin's The Dispossessed both feature the internal politics of scientific progress as major plot points, and won the Hugo award just two years apart, but stylistically they could hardly be further apart. The lumpen Asimov seems from another era, compared to the Le Guin, and I'd say it was one of Asimov's best. For all that, I enjoyed both of them; they just have different virtues. |
09-18-2012, 11:19 AM | #18 |
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I remember an essay about science fiction-by Poul Anderson, I think. According to it the true value of science fiction isn't predicting changes in technology but predicting the social effects of those changes. The part I remember was about science fiction that might have been written in 1880-1900. The automobile was visible, if not yet commonly known. So the technological change would be the prevalence of the automobile. No problem if you treat it like a horse. ("The hero jumped into his automobile & raced off in pursuit of the bad guys.") But the true value was in predicting how the automobile would allow people to live further away from their jobs, thus creating suburbs, and provide more privacy for lovers, thus increasing 'back seat' sex, etc.
In that view, Asimov's writing is very good. Although he couldn't predict technology beyond nuclear fusion (really? what about hyperspace jumps?) he predicted the social changes well. Whether or not he's accurate remains to be seen-but I haven't seen any evidence (yet) that he's wrong. |
09-18-2012, 11:20 AM | #19 | ||
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09-18-2012, 11:25 AM | #20 | |
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09-18-2012, 11:33 AM | #21 |
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I read the Foundation series back in the early 60s. I enjoyed it. Was he my favorite science fiction writer? No. I do agree others wrote better stories. Recently my Science Fiction/Fantasy book club read Foundation. All the younger readers didn't care for it till I started pointing out some of the ideas & philosophy he was imparting. None of the club members liked the main character nor the blind following of so many people after his "death". I honestly don't think we were suppose to like the main character. He really wasn't all that likable.
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09-18-2012, 11:48 AM | #22 | |
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And I say this as someone who has a certain apprecation for the classics. (Could not read the one written by his son, though. From what I could tell, by the writing style, the characterization, the plotting, it was written when said son was about three years old.) |
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09-18-2012, 12:16 PM | #23 | |
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I think being a great visionary and storyteller is a thing in its own right -- and that a author shouldn't be dinged for lack of being a great writer. Put another way - perhaps Vera Wang or other fashion person can't sew at all, but he/she can design and put colors and styles together well enough that it don't matter. |
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09-18-2012, 12:18 PM | #24 | |
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09-18-2012, 12:21 PM | #25 |
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09-18-2012, 12:30 PM | #26 | |
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Robotics as a science practically deifies him since he pretty much wrote the roadmap for the science. To appreciate Asimov you have to appreciate ideas more than wordsmithing. His prose is intentionally lean and accessible to make the ideas accessible (the man wrote textbooks and popular science books--he was Brian Greene before Brian Greene). If wordsmithing is your thing, go to Bradbury and Ellison and the other New Wave/Dangerous Vision era writers. Don't expect it from the Asimov era SF writers because that is not what the *editors* were looking and paying for. (That is precisely what the Dangerous Visions revolt was all about.) Asimov started in the 30's and wrote most of his signature works in the 40's. For a look of what his works evolved to, you might want to look at THE GODS THEMSELVES or his latter Robot and Foundation books. He can no more be blamed for writing 40's SF than 70's fantasists can be blame for writing Tolkienesque fantasies. He and they wrote what the market let them publish. |
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09-18-2012, 12:49 PM | #27 |
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YES! This is exactly why I love science fiction, and it's what I look for. I don't look for the futuristic setting, I don't look for the character development, I look for the exploration of the ethical and moral implications. I love science fiction stories that leave you thinking and pondering right vs. wrong.
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09-18-2012, 12:53 PM | #28 | |
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09-18-2012, 12:56 PM | #29 |
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Stories can be dated without being overrates. I recently read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I could see how this would have been an amazing story to someone in the 1870's, when little was known of life under the sea, and when submarines were only in early prototypes. But I couldn't share that excitement, becasue I live in a world where we know a lot about undersea life, I can strap on a scuba tank or watch a documentary, and submarines are fairly routine. That doesn't take anything away from the book, even if it was less interesting to me than it would have been to a reader in 1870.
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09-18-2012, 12:58 PM | #30 |
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Re: Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ --- an interesting alternative to that for modern sensibilities would be Fred Saberhagen's _The Dracula Tapes_.
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