Not necessarily. I’ve seen some articles about how touch-screens would be a bad idea, EVER, for a military vessel…
Think of it this way: Draw a keyboard on a piece of paper. Then try to type your name on it. How do you know if you’ve hit the right button?
An important part of typing is FEELING the button get pressed. If it’s just a flat surface, well, you’d see the total number of typos fly through the roof (and don’t tell me “You’re supposed to look at a touch-screen”, because the shmoes in Star Trek don’t. Not always.)
I disagree: the right order to read the Robot novels is to read Caves of Steel, Naked Sun and Robots of Dawn. Then toss any other, later robot novel in the trash.
Same with the Foundation stuff. Read the first three in order (remember: Second Foundation is the THIRD book.) Then stop. Save yourself deep, deep hurting. Foundation’s Edge isn’t bad but the books after that are retroactively poisonous (you can’t read the good early books without thinking about the taint that the later books bring. Ringworld Throne does the same thing)
The post-Asimov books are so stinky that I understand that the Library of Congress has to keep them in an airtight vault to prevent their miasma of noisesome horror from contaminating other books. (The robots put sattilites beaming stupidity rays all over the galaxy so we wouldn’t get too technologically advanced?!)
Maybe I was unclear, it was late. Obviously, the robot and Foundation novels should be read in order. When I wrote that they can be read in any order, I meant that it doesn’t matter whether you read the Foundation, Empire, or Robot trilogy first. Within each trilogy, they should be read in the order of publication.
If you don’t care for the later books, fine. I agree that they aren’t the same quality as the earlier ones, but I enjoyed them thoroghly, and I can’t see anyone who is a fan of the early stuff skipping the later books. Their primary function is to provide links between the various books in the three series and to use one era to reveal new things about the others. I think it works.
And I don’t dislike the Second Foundation Trilogy or the Caliban trilogy nearly as much as you seem to. They aren’t the equal of Asimov’s work, but I found them mediocre, not terrible.
And for those who do want to read the later Asimov works, I stand by the order I in which listed them (in order of publication starting with Foundation’s Edge). It is important not to try to put them in chronological order by putting Robots and Empire after The Robots of Dawn or by reading Prelude and Forward before the earlier Foundation novels.
Here is the order the books should be read in:
The Early Stuff (40’s and 50’s)
Robot Stories
The Complete Robot: contains all of the original robot short stories in chronological order. Track it down.
The new TV Guide covers a bunch of this. The rushed launching of the new Warp V-capable ship is the result of first contact with the Klingons. Reminicient of the opening scenes of “Men in Black”, a Klingon ship crashes into a Midwest field and the surviors are subsequently attacked by a shotgun-wielding farmer. The Enterprise is launched in order to intercept the homeward bound Klingons. The Vulcans feel that Humans are not ready to venture into deep space so they put T’Pol on board to keep an eye on things, and possibly undermine its progress. This may be the cause of Capt. Archer’s general distrust of Vulcans.
The magazine also features several set pics, including an engine room inspired by one in a nuclear sub, the USS Houston IIRC. The ship is piloted via a Porsche steering wheel.
From what I’ve read Archer distrusts the Vulcans because he feels they undermined his father’s work on warp technology, or held him back from achieving the same greatness as Cochrane.
The transporters are new technology used only for transporting cargo. Archer supposedly has line in the pilot, referring to his dog Porthos: “I wouldn’t put my dog in one of the damn things.” Of course this can only mean that in some crunch in the action, Archer will have to allow himself to be transported.
Some casting: Gary Graham (Sykes from TV’s “Alien Nation” – you know, the guy who looks like a cross between Mick Jagger and Steven Tyler) will guest as the head Vulcan Ambassador, Soval.
Saw on “Ain’t it Cool News” a story talking about a Enterprise/Roswell crossover. If that happens, I’m going to gather together a posse to go burn down Paramount. Who’s with me?
Just finished reading the script, and I gotta ask, does anyone know how to say, “Giant sucking sound” in Klingon? This thing is going to suck Rigelian cockmaggots!
Sir tried opening the script in Distiller to see if it’d let me break the script free of that format, but no dice, the annotator has locked it out. So if you wanna read it, then you’re going to have to use Adobe. Really, you’re not missing much. I’ll probably watch the pilot to see if its really as bad as its looks, but I doubt I’ll watch anything other than that.
Personally, I think these guys should just apologize to Harlan Ellison and hire him back. That’s the only way I can see the series coming to anything good. Otherwise, its going to make “Voyager” look like high art!
