Geek Out: Asimov

I was 11 years when I read my first Asimov story. I'd gotten into Star Trek when I was about seven, so I was primed for all sorts of scifi action in my future.

I, Robot was what I read first. A collection of some of the coolest, classical, robot SF action. Really hooked me.

So, we've got a stable of geeks 'round here. Let's bring a few out of the woodwork and talk about Asimov.

I think my favorite Asimov character had to be R. Daneel Olivaw, since I identified with his character's feeling out of place, yet cheerfully assertive of his value and purpose. It was also great to follow his adventures through multiple books.

Positronic Man was an amazing work, in that Asimov was able to credibly spin a tale wherein a simple machine became a feeling individual that the reader felt plenty of emotion for. Character development that takes a bunch of bolts and turns it into a person is very impressive to me. (Remember when Andrew goes to the library and is intercepted by the bullies? A book has never brought me closer to rage and tears at the same time.)

Asimov's short stories are really amazing, too. He's very talented at rendering a sufficiently complete picture of a setting and character with very few words. His short work is at times wry, at times mirthful, sometimes even heart-wrenching. For being so well-known for SF, his range so vastly exceeds the confines of simple aliens or robot stories.

A story called "What If," for example, delves into the wild world of causality and fate via the simple vehicle of a mysterious fellow and his crystal ball, both of whom are encountered and then questioned by a young couple. The treatment of this complex and deep subject is so simple and so effective, it makes me weep at the thought of what passes for "science fiction" these days.

If you love Asimov, pick up Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories, Volume 1. It's a beefy paperback filled with some of the most fascinating fiction you'll ever read. Definitely nice to have on the bookshelf for rainy afternoons, or in the travel bag for airport holdovers.

C'mon, I know I'm not alone in my enthusiasm here.

You're not. I'm up all night because of a bunch of sci fi movies on AMC. lol And of course, Asimov (is he still alive?) is the big daddy of them all.

And let's not leave out Ray Bradbury, poetry in motion in "Something Wicked This Way Comes."

coco

Sadly, we lost Isaac Asimov in 1992. He left us having contributed at least one book to every category of the Dewey decimal system (except for one, I forget which). That's a whole lot of writing to do in one lifetime.

As for Bradbury, he was influential as well, but there was a certain pomposity to his (written) voice which left me unenchanted. I forget which Bradbury works I read in my youth besides F 451, but there were a bunch of short stories and one other book I'd absorbed, but not with much gusto.

Asimov, on the other hand, was very successful at eliciting my grin and holding my interest. I guess what fascinates me about Asimov is his unbeatable charisma as an author, coupled with the amazing scope of his work and the depth of his understanding.

There's also Arthur C. Clarke, who is still kicking, and whose books I read with initial curiosity and eventual boredom -- he had interesting ideas (communication satellites) but I couldn't keep up very long without losing interest. Heinlein also comes to mind in speaking about classical SF. I loved Starship Troopers, but I wasn't impressed with Stranger in a Strange Land. Stranger was pretty cool in the beginning, but the cannibalism and free love at the end just left me weirded out.

Niven.

Niven AND Pournelle

Foundation.

Wanna-be geek, and Asimov lover here! He's one of the grand-daddies of the future, along with some other authors mentioned above. Martian Chronicles by Bradbury keeps me coming back time and time again. I also remember reading an anothology of humor collected by Asimov when very young ... anyone remember that?

How about Ursula LeGuin? Lots of people think of her more as fantasy / sci-fi but her commentaries meant a lot to me when I was much younger, although I've lost my taste for her as a "grown-up". The writing that had the most impact in that genre was Frank Herbert's Dune (and subsequent Dune novels). I ate it up, memorized passages, like other teens obsessed about Tolkien's "The Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings". Reaching now, but when very young, I was enamored by C.S. Lewis' Narnia books.

The best part is reading Dune, The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, and the Martian Chronicles aloud to my daughter ... to experience the words through her eyes brings a new dimension to all of them.

(one more fav ... Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - the short story which was the basis of Bladerunner by Heinlein ... yummmmy)

Yours in geekdom ...
-discordia Sandgrain

i think it was Phillip K Dick.

Asimov's characters always left me cold. Susan Calvin is the one I remember most vividly, but she was in most respects more robotic than her mechanical charges.

What Asimov excelled at was the interplay of ideas. His Laws of Robotics are the gold standard even now. "Psychohistory" predicted some trends in sociology. After he wrote the screenplay for Fantastic Voyage, he wrote a fascinating essay on why it was impossible. He was a virtuoso at crossing the border between "hard" and "soft" sciences.

One of my early favorites was Vonnegut, but it always miffed me that they put his books in the "Literature" section rather than "Science Fiction". It was almost as if the highbrows couldn't be bothered to rub shoulders with us geeks.

Stranger in a Strange Land is an atypical Heinlein book, though - though it does nicely serve as a reminder that aliens - even ones genetically huma - will be alien.

Job: A Comedy of Justice is one of my favorite Heinleins - that and Glory Road. And neither is really traditional sci-fi, oddly...

I think it does Asimov a disservice to hold Calvin as a good example the author's character writing abilities. He wrote the stories where she turns up very much in his youth. So much so, in fact, that he confesses heavily editing portions of "Liar!" for publication in later anthologies because the romantic interaction between Calvin and another character was so laughably unrealistic. If you compare the stony Calvin to, say, the nurse in "The Ugly Little Boy," you'll see the man got much better at writing women (the short story is about a nurse who befriends a prehistoric child brought to the future by a few scientists' cruel plaything). I think enthusiasts of Asimov's early robot fiction often complain of his characterization, but I always tend to urge them to read his later work for a more complete picture.

I'm telling you, track down a copy of his shorts that includes the story "What If--." By the time he wrote that, I think a lifetime of marriage had taught him plenty about the workings of female characters.

As for Vonnegut, it's funny you mention him, as I once read that he and Isaac were friends. In fact, Vonnegut took over for Asimov in the presidency or chairmanship of some prestigious thing or another (I can't remember what), after the latter's death.

edit: Vonnegut was his successor as president of the American Humanist Association.

Damon Knight!

Margaret Attwood dabbles in SciFi a bit too in the Hand Maidens Tale. I love Le Guin, but Heinlein, Vonnegut and Douglass Adams are probably my favorites. Though I remember reading "Something Wicked This Way Comes" about six times as a kid. I loved that story!

I am probably alone on this, but I *loved* "Stranger in a Strange Land," the free love and canibalism at the end was the *best* part, and certainly a large part of the point of the thing.

I find Heinlein is mostly not appreciated as a "great" because of the macho/fascist attitudes people attribute to him, and the fact that a lot of his stuff was pure "space opera," but hey,... it was the 1950's!

Several of his works are quite significant in terms of SF "firsts" and even his silly adventure stories often have sweeping social implications that are again, hardly noticed above the "adventure" aspects. "Puppet Masters" is a good example of this in that it is always treated as a simple alien invasion/action novel n the point of the thing is arguably the transformation of American society. (IMO)

"The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag." is also a great short story.

I wasn't terribly impressed by the characterization in "Prelude to Foundation" or "Forward the Foundation". It's adequate, certainly, but not deep. The protagonists of the Foundation series were not so much the people as the grand, sweeping epic scope of Asimov's vision. Perhaps in his short fiction he felt freer to deal with human motivations rather than the sum total of human progress across the universe.

For what it's worth, I feel much the same about Tolkien, another writer I love and respect. With the exception of Frodo, I always felt like he was dealing more with heroic archetypes rather than fully-realized characters.

Orson Scott Card is a writer I turn to for good characterization. His focus on his protagonists is razor sharp.

Caves of Steel was Asimov's best fiction writing, IMO. That's because he turned his fear of travelling, nature, and wide open places into a believable description of a crowded, underground, urban society. Elijah Bailey was a complex character, and the novel dealt with an issue not unlike racism. Liked that novel a lot.

The rest of Asimov generally leaves me cold. No character development, plots driven along by conversations, dialogue that only serves to propel the plot, no description or world-building. A bare stage on which the actors emote in a colorless fashion. A sense of crushing order in Asimov's fiction, in which there is no complexity, no ambiguity, no bizarre behavior, or even normal, confused behavior. Plots and characters are the same in his 1980's work as they were in his 1940's work. Little growth.

Not so much in the way of original ideas, either. The Three Laws and psychohistory, for example, were both outlined for Asimov by John W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding/Analog.

As for ideas, imagination, characterization, complicated plots and outlooks, and sweeping scope from Asimov's era, read Clarke's Childhood's End or The City and the Stars. Or Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man or The Stars My Destination.

IMO, IMO.

I <3 foundation. but you couldn't tell that at all with my name

Clarke rocks hard, no question. But despite my misgivings about Asimov's characterization, I still love reading his work. There was an intellectual playfulness about it, a willingness to tackle complexities in an era when many of his contemporaries were still writing "Martians want our women" stories. Your milage may vary.

Good lord. Orson Scott Card is king of all character writers. I've never, ever, ever been more absorbed emotionally by characters than when I have read his work. He's phenomenal at supplying his characters with motivations, with flaws, ambitions, with histories. I liked Ender's Game, but by far my favorite work of his was Speaker for the Dead and the two sequels. I'm definitely on the same page with you, here.

I wouln't put Dune in the same category.

Ursula's "The Dispossed" makes Dune look like Star Wars.

(that's a bad thing)

If you haven't yet, you should read Ender's Shadow and the rest of the Bean books.
Also, he wrote a short story, "The King of Words and the Changed Man", that blew my mind.

Philip K Dick is my fav. sci-fi author, his characters aren't as naturalistically human as Card's, but in some ways, in little things, he blows everyone out of the water. Pay attention to the conversational subtleties.

I've always thought Asimov was fabulous, probably because I've read more than just his science fiction... I have his autobiography (I love some of the stories he tells about speaking engagements and his fellow authors), I've read his humor collection, I remember eating up the George and Azazel stories he used to put in his digest-size magazine years ago... I admired his ability to make hard science fiction really interesting to non-scientific minds like mine. I wish I'd had a chance to meet him while he was alive... and I'll always treasure the autograph I have on a short note from him, complete with X'd out typos (which I loved seeing), replying to a fan letter I wrote ages ago. Opinions may vary as to where he is on the 'top-10 scifi writers of all time' list, but I think he seemed like he was a hell of a cool person.

Ooooo! What a wonderful letter to have! Yes, I was pretty sure Asimov had died some years back. My brother would have been the one to talk all these authors with you, he had quite the collection of them all.

The laws of robotics - Asimov's greatest contribution, in my opinion. To both science fiction and science. (Interestingly, my brother's interest in science fiction had a lot to do with the fact that he was a scientist, a neurophysicist.)

Me, though, I'm just reminded of all I HAVEN'T read, particularly in recent years. How can a person read when they spend all their free time at the computer? I'm lucky to get through my Dean Koontz novels, my current favorite author, and those are the living epitome of "page-turners."

I do love short stories though, and anthologies of short sci fi, horror, and crime fiction, so I probably will get around to that Asimov collection at some point.

coco

I read Ender's Shadow, and Hegemon, and another book in audio is waiting for me on my iPod. The Bean stuff isn't as interesting to me as Ender's life, though, for some reason. Another interesting read is The Worthing Saga, which is a bunch of related Card shorts stitched into a book.

I really need to read some Dick -- I've heard very good things about him and I know his stories make for some compelling thought. Maybe that'll be my next read.

(I'm just finishing another run through Atlas Shrugged, then I have The Case for Democracy by Natan Sharansky to read next. I also just finished Freakanomics, which is about quirky connections and patterns in human behavior and its consequences. Solid infotainment.)

I feel that way about Asimov in general. His writing style is a bit too spartan for my taste. I reread the first three Foundation books last summer. What blows me away about those books is when they were written. There are technologies and plot devices in those books that are still science fiction staples to this day (60 years later!). That he could look so far ahead and imagine technology that doesn't seem ridiculous today is just pretty mind blowing.

Any David Brin fans in the house? I'm on my fourth of his "Uplift" books in a row and I'm loving them. His universe, and especially his alien races are so incredibly inventive, and his characters are really well fleshed out and compelling. So far "Startide Rising" Is my favorite. It instantly became one of my favorites of all time. Brilliant stuff.