Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Drib
GETTING BACK ON TOPIC:
The books after Asimov's series written by other people were the ones, in my opinion, that shouldn't have been written, even though they were approved by Asimov and (later) by his widow.
To my way of thinking, the continuing of the series diluted the power of the original three (even Asimov's fourth one, published much later in his career.)
I remember the power of those first three novels, and reading them with that sense of wonder that I also felt when I read "Slan," by Van Vogt.
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Agreed.
Worse is his robot series, though he wrecked that himself. And wrecked is putting it mildly.
In the many years intervening between the two series' and their subsequent sequels, Asimov changed some of his belief systems. He abandoned psychohistory for environmentalism, and changed sexual mores (a married character who remains chaste in the face of serious temptation through one book, gives it up without a second thought in the later book... it was so out of place it made me wonder if he read his own work!).
His own personal beliefs being changed for good or ill is not the issue. It's that he injects those new beliefs much later into a well-established series, and does so in a way that "takes away" from the originals.
On calling psychohistory "fantasy." While its origins may be, Asimov certainly dealt with it in a "scientific" matter. You'd be pretty hard pressed to call
Foundation a book of Fantasy just because of psychohistory.
-Pie