What Asimov book.....

[pnerd]

Oh what was the third one called. Robots of Dawn?

Yes, the 3rd one is "Robots of Dawn". And the 4th one is "Robots and Empire".

 

[AE35Unit]

And the 4th one is "Robots and Empire".

Mind if i skip that one? That word Empire strikes fear into my foundation fearing heart!

 

[vivek]

I finished 'Gold' yestersdaay.Really nice book.But i liked the science fiction related articles in that book more than the short stories.

Among the short stories i liked 'Kid Brother' ( seemed a lot like that A.I. flick ) and 'Cal' ( about a robot who wants to be a writer).Most of them were good and wry sense of humour persists through most of the stories

a great read...

 

[manephelien]

If you like Asimovian humor, you might like to try his fantasy collection "Magic". It's a companion piece to "Gold" and has some great stories. Most of them involve that being from another dimension, Azazel. They're among the funniest stories Asimov's written, IMO.

 

[AE35Unit]

Yea Azazel was a fun book! I also had Magic but never got round to reading it before the big cleanout.

 

[vivek]

Cheers, i hope i can get that book here.

By the way Azazel does make a guest appearance in 'Gold' too.There's a story involving him which is written by a robot called 'Cal'.

 

[vivek]

2 posts in a row...

Have finished nearly 70% of i,robot...(i really liked 'Liar!')

have already got 'Caves of steel' so move onto that next

 

[tangaloomababe]

My two favorite Asimov books are Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun. I love R Daniel and Liji Bailey.

 

[Shadowmancer]

My two favorite Asimov books are Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun. I love R Daniel and Liji Bailey.

Good call...those books are great

 

[vivek]

just finished the first two chapters of 'Caves of steel' last night

(As a side note i dozed off around 3 in the morning with the lights on.The power prices in India are at an old time high and my dad was pretty angry this morning )

It's really a wonderful book and every time i rememebr this book was written in the 1950s it's even more astounding

 

[CatBar]

My two favorite Asimov books are Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun. I love R Daniel and Liji Bailey.

Me too. I just ADORE Daneel and love Elijah for loving Daneel. My regret is being born 1000 years too soon so missing out on what must be the most gorgeous looking humaniform this side of the galaxy!
I'd also just love to live on Aurora: no cars, not many people, beautiful scenery, detached houses, great food - and loads of gentle peaceful robots (especially Daneel).

 

[J-Sun]

I finished I. Asimov a few days ago - that being his last autobiography. It was an interesting and enjoyable book (except for parts near the end, unsurprisingly). However, it was kind of disorienting to realize how little a part the writing of science fiction played in the bulk of his life and how little he liked doing it, at least as far as jumping back in with Foundation's Edge and subsequent volumes. (I remember thinking Foundation's Edge and The Robots of Dawn as being different but worthy successors while the ones after that (the welding bits and prequels along with Nemesis), while still enjoyable, were less good. Interestingly, he had started both of those back in the 50s and used the few pages he'd had of the Foundation stuff, though started over with the Robot novel. Still, those were waiting to be written, whereas the later ones were not and that may have had something to do with it.)

I suspect the last Asimov fiction book I read was Azazel, since I never got it new and it took awhile to find it.

The last Asimov science fiction book may have been The Early Asimov, since that also took awhile to find.

Since I think the first SF book I ever read was The Foundation Trilogy and I just read the autobiography which discusses many of his books, I have an urge to go on a major Asimov binge (something like 38 books of fiction) but I have a lot of other reading to get to first.

 

[AE35Unit]

Oh the impressions I got from reading his bios is that he loved writing and being part of the science fiction world. He may have been less enthusiastic about the Foundation series later on as he perhaps felt it was stereotyping him. Kinda like how conan Doyle got tired of Sherlock Holmes and so killed him off.

 

[j d worthington]

Holmes, however, didn't stay dead (returning in "The Adventure of the Empty House" within the chronology of the series and -- iirc -- The Hound of the Baskervilles as far as publishing history); Asimov had something of the same problem with Hari Seldon and/or the Foundation....

 

[J-Sun]

Oh the impressions I got from reading his bios is that he loved writing and being part of the science fiction world. He may have been less enthusiastic about the Foundation series later on as he perhaps felt it was stereotyping him. Kinda like how conan Doyle got tired of Sherlock Holmes and so killed him off.

Right - he did love writing but, at least in I. Asimov (I haven't read In Memory Yet Green/In Joy Still Felt) he especially loved non-fiction writing best of all. And, yes, being part of the SF world, but not specifically the writing of SF, as much. This is slightly out of context, but on writer's block he says "Frequently when I am at work on a science fiction novel (the hardest to do of all the different things I write) I find myself heartily sick of it and unable to write another word" and then says he doesn't let it stop him, but simply turns to writing on some other project. (p.209 of my paperback.) Talking about basically leaving SF after 1958 and expecting his income to go down, he says "However things did not work out as I expected. In the first place, writing non-fiction was much easier and much more fun than writing fiction...If I had tried to write fiction full-time, I would have undoubtedly broken down." (p.253.) I mean, that goes without saying - virtually everyone gets writer's block or sick of writing something here and there and if he were to turn out four or five hundred books they couldn't have all been fiction - Balzac couldn't even do that. And, in other places, he gives the impression he often did enjoy writing SF and novels, but just not as much as I would have thought.

As far as the Foundation/Robot series, I gather he would have been just as happy never to start again but the way he describes getting back into it by re-reading the trilogy and the few pages of the fourth book he already had, it kind of swept him back into writing it. He sounded like he was having fun there. "Now I wanted to write a fourth Foundation novel..." (p.466.) But even after the success of Foundation's Edge, he reacts by saying "...I knew I was doomed. Doubleday would never let me stop writing novels again -and they never did." (p.469.) Not sure how much of that is tongue-in-cheek, but it's at least partly serious.

And then, even after realizing he "had no choice" (p.482), he didn't want to write any more Foundation stuff after that, so turned to the Baley/Olivaw books and rewrote the part of the third he had and finished it. Then he does say he enjoyed writing The Robots of Dawn, so went on with the fourth one along with the idea of tying it into the Empire but, yeah, one gets the idea the later books were more perfunctory or Doubleday-driven.

Anyway, part of this may be that I had just read Pohl's The Way the Future Was and, unlike Asimov, Pohl was almost purely SF, though as writer, editor, and agent. Whereas Asimov was pretty much just a writer, but a writer of much more than just SF. And Pohl goes into great detail regarding The Futurians and so on, whereas Asimov (relatively) just brushes the subject here and there.

Either way, I enjoy Asimov's non-fiction but his fiction most of all and I'm glad he wrote both.

 

[Patrick Mahon]

I'm most of the way through 'The Stars, Like Dust' right now. I've read several of Asimov's books, but never come across this before now. It's fun and engaging, but inevitably (given that it was originally published in 1950, I think) a little dated in some areas.

The edition I'm reading is a 2009 reprint from Orb, who appear to be one of Tor's imprints. Anyone know if this is part of a masterplan of theirs to reprint lots of Asimov's novels?

 

[Doctor Crankenstein]

Believe it or not... Asimov's Lecherous Limericks.

Every now and then he says what his wife's reaction to the Limerick was and it's absolutely hilarious.

 

[Nocturne]

The "Bicentennial Man"!

 

[xenofon]

I just finished "The Positronic Man". The next two are "Destination:Brain" and "Robots and Empire" and with this I'll finish all the 22 sf novels of Asimov. And I have to say: I enjoyed them all !!!

 

[Darkday]

I just finished "The Positronic Man". The next two are "Destination:Brain" and "Robots and Empire" and with this I'll finish all the 22 sf novels of Asimov. And I have to say: I enjoyed them all !!!

Now you should try to read all of Asimov's sf short stories (or even better, all his short stories). Good luck ...

By the way, I count 25 Asimov sf novels, not including the three Robert Silverberg novels.