Isaac Asimov was born January 2, 1920.
He is considered to be one of the greats of Science Fiction. Do people still read him much? [I remember reading the Foundation series quite some time ago. I liked it; but I never got around to reading much else.]
Not just SF: I believe he still holds he record for the number of Dewey Decimal categories in which he’s written authoritatively (including a joke book he wrote while on vacation because he couldn’t bear sitting around idly). I found his Bible commentaries more enlightening than 12+ years of RCC education.
There’s a lot more to the Foundation universe than the trilogy, but overall the trilogy — though horribly dated from a 21st century perspective — is probably the high point.
Asimov is no longer what he was, when the first couple of shelves in every small SF bookstore was all his work. Most younger readers are only vaguely aware of him and Foundation doesn’t really hold up. His style – people explaining things to each other – is clearly out of style for modern readers, who expect SF to be filled with action.
He was a favorite of mine while he was writing, the epitome of the “literature of ideas.” But the field has moved on, and he’s become mostly a historical figure.
I’m not sure which of his works might hold up. Some of his short stories, and maybe his R. Daneel Olivaw novels still work as mysteries.
Didn’t realize this was his centennial - sorry he didn’t at least get a US postage stamp to mark the occasion.
Have to admit I liked his writing more when I was in my teens and twenties. I recently reread The Robots of Dawn, which I remember really enjoying when it originally came out in 1983, and was underwhelmed. Much talkier and with more cardboardy characters than I remembered.
The Last Question is one of the greatest short stories ever written. So much so, that if people told him they read a story and couldn’t remember the title, he always said, “It’s The Last Question.”
I was gifted a copy of the Foundation trilogy when I was 12. I didn’t read it until years later, and then I was hooked. I read basically all the Asimov scifi I could find. Some of my favorites are I, Robot (it is nothing like the recent movie) and The Caves of Steel. His short stories are often brilliant as well.
As a kid I devoured his non-fiction.
“The Gods Themselves” is pretty good, the rest of his SF was rather stilted.
Most of his mysteries should hold up just fine. Watching my students being unable to add things up in their heads makes his “Feeling of Power” resonate all the more. Like OttoDeFe, I really learned from his Bible commentaries. (does that make him a rabbi? Or just a bodhisattva?)
I don’t necessarily disagree, but my take is slightly different. I like the parts of Asimov’s work as much now as I did thirty years ago, if I liked them thirty years ago. I also did not like Robots of Dawn nearly as much as The Caves of Steel or The Naked Sun, but I didn’t think the characters were that much more cardboardy. Asimov was like Agatha Christie - he came up with an idea and wrote around that. Characterization and prose style were means to an end. The Robot stories, ringing the changes on the Three Laws of Robotics, or a whodunnit idea in The Black Widowers. I thought the robot idea was kind of played out by the time of Robots of Dawn.
He wrote a ton of stuff, so naturally he would kind of miss the mark once in a while. He was one of the greats, no doubt, but atmosphere and characterization and so forth were not his source of appeal.
Although Pâté de Foie Gras remains one of my favorite science spoof articles of all time.
Regards,
Shodan
Quite a few of his stories are mysteries, even if they’re not marketed as such. That is, they’re about finding the solution to some mystery, problem, or puzzle, whether it’s “Who was the murderer?” or “Why is the robot acting like that?”
And once, he accidentally wrote exactly the same story twice, without realizing until many years later, when he was putting together a compilation, that he did so.
If not that, then Nightfall.
I liked his science essays. The ones relying on history may still be up to date. If they ever published a series called The Annotated Asimov, with glosses of changes since publication, I’d be tempted to buy it.
Note: there’s a lot of odd stuff regarding his birth date. Besides the usual pre-Revolution NS vs OS dating, there was his mother fudging his age by a year to get into school early. On top of that, as Wikipedia points out, “Asimov was born … on an unknown date between October 4, 1919 and January 2, 1920, inclusive.”
So, happy birth range, Isaac!
I loved his old F&SF essay collections. He was at his best writing terse essays to a knowledgeable audience.
Asimov was an excellent nonfiction writer. My two dives into his fiction - which were into his two most famous trilogies, Foundation and I, Robot - were a lot less rewarding. The characters were cardboardy, as Elendil’s Heir said, and when you don’t care about the characters, it’s hard to care about the outcome.
I met Asimov once. Really friendly guy. He was wearing a bright pistacchio-green suit.
Back in the day I read lots of his stuff, both fiction and non. Haven’t in years, though.
I was a huge fan as a teenager. And once, in junior high school, I wrote to him. (The Who’s Who book in the school library listed his actual address.) Somewhere I have the postcard he sent in reply.
Heck, if January 2, 2020 is the latest day on which he could have been born, then this is his You Were Definitely Born By Now Day.
His** Introduction to Physics** books were great for a layman who isn’t terrified of math. He really went into basic physical concepts, without diving head first into quantum weirdness like a lot of popular books do. They were very clearly and engagingly written.
He knew he was writing basically the same story - he forgot that the original version had actually been published (probably because it was published in a lesser market, not Astounding, which is the market that he thought was the top of the field by far).\
Nope - I was mistaken. The original version of the story was rejected, and the only copy of it lost, until Boston College found it Big Game (short story) - Wikipedia - but I think Asimov was conscious of the fact he was using the same idea as before.
I was never much of a science fiction kind of a guy, but I did like his Black Widowers stories. He had a talent for taking something small and seemingly insignificant and using it as a basis for a story–I’m thinking here especially of a story called “All in the Way You Read It,” which dealt with the combination to a lock, but there were others. Sure, sometimes the solutions were implausible or the necessary knowledge obscure. Still, I always looked forward to the next one.