portlock seagull
Well-known member
- Jul 28, 2003
- 17,739
Any fans of out there? Never read so interested to hear thoughts on
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[Film] Isaac Asimov Books
- Thread starter portlock seagull
- Start date
Cheshire Cat
The most curious thing..
Foundation trilogy is good. It was on the radio decades ago, and is also worth a listen if you can find the links and they still work.
https://www.radioechoes.com/?page=series&genre=OTR-SciFi&series=The Foundation Trilogy
https://www.radioechoes.com/?page=series&genre=OTR-SciFi&series=The Foundation Trilogy
- Mar 1, 2021
- 557
The current series is quite a lot different from the foundation books which are a great read if you like sci-fi.
Green Cross Code Man
Wunt be druv
Yeah I found the series so different I gave up on it quite quickly. The first three foundation books are great but the others that followed a while later are a bit less so. I think the publisher paid top dollar for quantity. I thought his writing was worse the older he became. I like the concepts of things like I Robot but imo, and I read a lot of Asimov when I was young, The Gods Themselves is very very good, and slightly stands apart from his other work. I read years later that TGT was widely considered his best work.
Oh and the Foundation radio series can be found on YouTube, I recently listened to it again.
- Oct 12, 2022
- 2,683
I enjoyed the robot stories, when I read them they were collected across two books. I suspect some enterprising publisher will have published “the Complete Robot Stories” by now. Some technical elements may seem off the mark to a modern reader, but some of the ethical questions remain very much valid.
Marxo
Well-known member
The Elijah Baley trilogy: The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, The Robots of Dawn and the sequel Robots and Empire. Great Sci-Fi detective books.
portlock seagull
Well-known member
- Jul 28, 2003
- 17,739
- Thread starter
- #7
Thank you everyone, much appreciated.
- Aug 7, 2003
- 8,072
At the same time that I read the Foundation books (many years ago) I also read Larry Niven’s Ringworld series. Also excellent.
Green Cross Code Man
Wunt be druv
Ringworld is a great concept. Loved the Idea.
Blues Guitarist
Well-known member
Asimov tells great stories. The Foundation Trilogy (and the other foundation books), the robot stories, and the Galactic Empire novels are all great reads. Read them all, in the order shown here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov. The stories themselves are entertaining, but there are two "Oh shit, I didn't see that coming" moments that beat anything I've read from other authors.
portlock seagull
Well-known member
- Jul 28, 2003
- 17,739
- Thread starter
- #11
Cheers Blues, will take a look. Thank you.
Jimmy Come Lately
Registered Loser
I recently re-read the original Foundation novel (well, collected short stories) to check whether some of the interesting ideas in the Foundation TV series had been invented for the show or were just things I'd forgotten from the books. I was expecting to find it to be badly written, my tolerance for paper-thin characters and clunky dialogue not being as high as it was forty years ago when I was a lad, but I was surprised that the stories were kind of... boring.
Although the plots race forward because hardly any words are wasted on descriptions of settings or people or any other bits of flavour that might slow things down, the basic format is:
Scene 1: Politicians in a cigar-smoke-filled room argue about the best way to deal with an emerging crisis.
Scene 2: Politicians in a cigar-smoke-filled room discuss the surprising way the crisis has been resolved since the first scene.
And the big ideas, which is what you're really here for with Asimov, seemed wildly implausible and not nearly as clever as I'd remembered. One thing that struck me is that there are only two female characters in it, who first turn up on page 185 out of 234, over 150 years into the story: a shrewish wife who gets a couple of pages of nagging at her husband, and one of her servants, who gets the single syllable of dialogue, "Oh!". Also jarring, but rather amusing, is the way that society 20,000 years in the future feels almost exactly like 1940s America.
I remember Foundation And Empire and Second Foundation getting more interesting as the scope expands. And going rapidly downhill again with Foundation's Edge.
The robot short stories (and many of his other short stories) are entertaining thought experiments with clever twists. The stories wrapped around them can be a little flimsy but I still vividly remember the core ideas from some of them many years later.
Anyway, barring the later bloated Foundation books, nothing that he wrote takes long to read so it's worth trying one for yourself and seeing how you find it.
Although the plots race forward because hardly any words are wasted on descriptions of settings or people or any other bits of flavour that might slow things down, the basic format is:
Scene 1: Politicians in a cigar-smoke-filled room argue about the best way to deal with an emerging crisis.
Scene 2: Politicians in a cigar-smoke-filled room discuss the surprising way the crisis has been resolved since the first scene.
And the big ideas, which is what you're really here for with Asimov, seemed wildly implausible and not nearly as clever as I'd remembered. One thing that struck me is that there are only two female characters in it, who first turn up on page 185 out of 234, over 150 years into the story: a shrewish wife who gets a couple of pages of nagging at her husband, and one of her servants, who gets the single syllable of dialogue, "Oh!". Also jarring, but rather amusing, is the way that society 20,000 years in the future feels almost exactly like 1940s America.
I remember Foundation And Empire and Second Foundation getting more interesting as the scope expands. And going rapidly downhill again with Foundation's Edge.
The robot short stories (and many of his other short stories) are entertaining thought experiments with clever twists. The stories wrapped around them can be a little flimsy but I still vividly remember the core ideas from some of them many years later.
Anyway, barring the later bloated Foundation books, nothing that he wrote takes long to read so it's worth trying one for yourself and seeing how you find it.
As a teenager I was a huge fan and had about 50 or 60 of his books. Eventually over the years I got rid of them all because .... well on re-reading I found most of them a little bit crappy. The original Foundation trilogy was good and if you haven't read any that's worth reading (I haven't seen any TV series) and of course he is known for inventing the 'Three Laws of Robotics' (handy now in the age of AI). However overall I did find I'd grown out of his 'folksy' style; he wasn't one for wasting words on scene-setting or character description and often his characters all spoke with the same 'voice'.
Actually having said I got rid of them all I still have two: 'The Stars in their Courses', and 'Asimov's Guide to Science' which are both popular science books. And very good as his style really suited scientific explanation, I imagine he must have been a great teacher.
Having typed the above I realise I have maybe done him a bit of dis-service. As well as the rubbish he also wrote (imo) three classic short stories: 'Nightfall' about a planet which had six suns so it was in perpetual daylight - until one day they all aligned so that the inhabitants experienced darkness for the very first time. 'The Last question' about entropy and the end of the universe, and 'The Bicentennial Man' about a robot who is eventually legally declared a human man. (Also quite topical!). He also, rare for the period, wrote quite a few SF stories that had a female lead: Dr Susan Calvin, robotics expert.
Actually having said I got rid of them all I still have two: 'The Stars in their Courses', and 'Asimov's Guide to Science' which are both popular science books. And very good as his style really suited scientific explanation, I imagine he must have been a great teacher.
Having typed the above I realise I have maybe done him a bit of dis-service. As well as the rubbish he also wrote (imo) three classic short stories: 'Nightfall' about a planet which had six suns so it was in perpetual daylight - until one day they all aligned so that the inhabitants experienced darkness for the very first time. 'The Last question' about entropy and the end of the universe, and 'The Bicentennial Man' about a robot who is eventually legally declared a human man. (Also quite topical!). He also, rare for the period, wrote quite a few SF stories that had a female lead: Dr Susan Calvin, robotics expert.
JetsetJimbo
Well-known member
- Jun 13, 2011
- 1,160
Was a bit of an Asimov obsessive as a teenager. I must have borrowed every book of his that was in the old Brighton library before it moved it the new premises.
As I got older I got more into weirder sci-fi like PKD. But Asimov's work, and the Foundation series in particular, will always mean a lot to me.
As I got older I got more into weirder sci-fi like PKD. But Asimov's work, and the Foundation series in particular, will always mean a lot to me.