Asimov's Unfit For Schools?

[j d worthington]

Ah, Andrew... whatever are we going to do with you?

(Hey, Neddie... you got that oubliette ready yet?)

 

[Urien]

An oubliette?..good I've always enjoyed a French sandwich.

Ou est mon croque monsieur?

 

[j d worthington]

Andrew: I love a bad pun as much as the next person, but ... OUCH!

 

[Sketti]

My parents never tried to control what I was reading. My mother's books have always been available to me. She figured, rightly, that anything I wasn't ready for would go right over my head and would get bored quickly of the less "fun" books. Honestly! There is a lot of stuff kid's don't get and reading words on a page isn't going to make them suddenly realize "evil" things. Explanation is required.
People should just be happy their kids want to read at all.

As for me, when I have kids, I'll do things the way my mother did. I think she was quite successful

 

[palooka]

On the one hand the story itself just seems to be sensationalising.

On the other, SFF is about treating issues from the viewpoint of a different world and that sometimes includes the sex. There are those who are always going to view that more negatively perhaps than us open-minded SFF fans .

Although, personally, I don't remember Asimov pushing those boundaries particularly far.

 

[fantasy noob]

thats garbage if u dont want ur kid reading it dont let them dont go bitching about it i beleive all asimovs work should be shared, was the particular article in question even writin by asimov

 

[that old guy]

Am I missing something ultra-important about the "girls in white socks" part?

 

[j d worthington]

thats garbage if u dont want ur kid reading it dont let them dont go bitching about it i beleive all asimovs work should be shared, was the particular article in question even writin by asimov

Errr, no... it's referring to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, which was initiated under Asimov's imprimature, but Ike has been dead since 1992. The question is simply about it being within the accepted parameters of a middle school (or even, in my experience, a high school) approved reading matter -- as they must be careful to stay within socially accepted bounds or face lawsuits and such. And the answer is: sf has grown up, and isn't just for children anymore... hasn't been for a very, very long time, in fact ... so the magazine shouldn't have been on the list nor did were the editors and such aware that it was; nor would they have approved, as they do occasionally publish stories with adult (not obscene) content.

Though, to be honest, I rather doubt that either school boards or parents would approve of their kids reading either Ike's The Sensuous Dirty Old Man or his various volumes of Lecherous Limericks......

 

[Timewalker]

I haven't read Asimov's fiction to any great extent; in all honesty, most of what I have read is too dry for me. And I really did try to read Foundation, but perhaps I should give it another try. After all, trying to read the Foundation books right after getting out of a gruelling sociology final in college wasn't the best idea I ever had...

So I'm pretty sure that Asimov's fiction would not contain much, if anything at all, that could be considered offensive. Asimov was about the science part of his fiction, over any sensationalism.

That said, the elementary-junior high school I attended at the time I got into SF (1975; I was in Grade 8) had some Asimov in its stacks. But I soon discovered something I enjoyed far more than Asimov's fiction: I discovered his nonfiction -- specifically, his essay collections. Over the course of 25 years or so, I've managed to read nearly all the essays published in the various collections. And some of them are ones I've enjoyed so much, I reread them occasionally.

Now of course, Asimov's writing and other authors' writing that appears in a magazine that bears Asimov's name are entirely different things. And "offensive" is a very subjective term. It seems to me that the mother may have accidentally found one story in particular that happened to be more explicit than the rest of the issue's content and she jumped to the conclusion that it was all like that. The article certainly made no effort to verify any facts before going public in such an inflammatory manner.

But the Asimov magazine's dedicated readership is more than capable of seeing through such absurdities, and realizing that those who try to censor books only end up giving free publicity to the objects of their scorn. I'm reminded of an incident that happened locally some years ago: somebody happened to pick up a copy of Of Mice And Men and take note of the "bad" words in it -- in fact, this person had so little to do with his life that he actually counted the number of words he didn't like. He complained to an MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly - a politician at the provincial level), who in turn tried to get this book removed from the school libraries, if not the public libraries. Apparently, all those "gosh darn" bad words were so terrible that our society would come crashing down in ruins if this book were allowed to remain accessible to the public.

The result of all this? The book was not banned, almost no public support was forthcoming for a ban, and in fact, people were so curious to see what all the fuss was about that within a week there were no copies available anywhere in Red Deer or the surrounding towns! Not in the libraries, not in the bookstores -- they were all borrowed and sold out; you couldn't even find a copy in the second-hand bookstores!

May Asimov's enjoy such unintended success!