Quote:
Originally Posted by Nate the great
And don't tell me it's difficult to write strong female characters in the 1950s; Heinlein wrote several.
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Ah, but Heinlein was a character-focused writer.
And he gave us memorable characters by the dozen. (Johnny Rico, Hugh Farnham, Lazarus Long, Val Smith...)
Asimov and Clarke were both focused in other directions, being primarily short-story writers.
But when Asimov felt the need to focus on character he didn't do all that badly. (THE END OF ETERNITY and PEBBLE IN THE SKY comes to mind from his more neglected works, as well as the ROBOT NOVELS where character is a driving force as much as the social issues at the heart of the stories.)
More to the point, when you consider that the ostensible premise of the classic FOUNDATION series is that individual action is subsumed/outweighed by the greater forces of mass human activity (economics, demography, etc) it would be a bit ironic if the series had spawned an iconic protagonist comparable to The Mule (who was defined as an aberration to start with).