With a couple of brief exceptions, I had never really read Isaac Asimov.
Yeah, I know, Martin. And it did seem like a gap in my education. So I decided to read The Naked Sun.
It's a detective story as well, which was Asimov's other great love. A detective from Earth, which is considered a backwater in the far future, is assigned to investigate a locked room murder on one of the tonier colony worlds. A world with a culture that seems strange to him and undoubtedly to most readers of the 20th century. He's assigned the eerily humanoid robot R. Daneel Olivaw as a partner. And let me tell you, if Asimov had wanted to start trouble with the Star Trek people over Data, he could have.
What's funny is that you can tell that Asimov is writing in the pulp era, but he's a fundamentally polite writer. And he's one of the science fiction authors for whom characters exist to carry out his ideas, but his ideas do carry the show.
Yeah, I know, Martin. And it did seem like a gap in my education. So I decided to read The Naked Sun.
It's a detective story as well, which was Asimov's other great love. A detective from Earth, which is considered a backwater in the far future, is assigned to investigate a locked room murder on one of the tonier colony worlds. A world with a culture that seems strange to him and undoubtedly to most readers of the 20th century. He's assigned the eerily humanoid robot R. Daneel Olivaw as a partner. And let me tell you, if Asimov had wanted to start trouble with the Star Trek people over Data, he could have.
What's funny is that you can tell that Asimov is writing in the pulp era, but he's a fundamentally polite writer. And he's one of the science fiction authors for whom characters exist to carry out his ideas, but his ideas do carry the show.
2 comments:
Asimov's Robot books were definitely interesting and I agree with you that R. Daneel Olivaw was a very clever invention, as were his Three Laws of Robotics. The man was definitely a prolific writer. The books of his I remember enjoying most were the first three Foundation novels - I don't think I ever got around to the others (nor all the Dune books either, for that matter).
It's funny you decided to go back to check out some early sci-fi. I recently re-read Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama - another of those with pretty much interchangeable characters but a fascinating story.
I never managed to develope a taste for Heinein's books and probably never shall.
The Three Laws of Robotics make a lot of sense, which is why I wouldn't count on them being instituted in real life. Asimov uses them in a clever way as well, in terms of the murder mystery aspect of the story. They account for why it's an apparently impossible crime, but they turn out to be permeable as well.
I'll have to read Rendesvous with Rama in the near future. It came out just a few years after the movie 2001, so Clarke would seem to be dealing with an expanded audience. The cover of the 1973 edition looks pretty wild.
I've read barely anything by Heinlein so far. Might sample him further, or not. He did lead an interesting life.
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