James Gunn on Isaac Asimov

[J-Sun]

Interesting article celebrating Isaac Asimov.

On a personal note, it struck me funny that, in defending Asimov's style, I'd said,

Let's put it this way: few would argue that he has a superb non-fiction style in writing science fact for the layman. No one's style better informs their readers. His unforgivable sin is that he uses basically the same style in his science fiction.

(where "unforgivable sin" is ironic) and Gunn says,

In the book I wrote about him, I suggested that his fiction got its characteristic Asimovian flavor from the fact that it was written like science, and his non-fiction got its readability from the fact that it was written like fiction.

Slightly different (particularly as Gunn completes the parallelism), but overlapping points. I have the Patrouch book but haven't read it yet, and need to get the Gunn, too.

Anyway - there may not be much new to the Asimov fan (as he raised each subject, I thought of at least one of the anecdotes he ended up using to illustrate it except the wonderful "porn" anecdote which I'd either not heard or forgotten, though I remember the scene itself), but it's still fun to read and it should be informative to those less familiar with him.

 

[Pyan]

Good article, great author.

My favourite quote about Asimov came, allegedly, from Harlan Ellison:

He had writer's block once. It was the worst ten minutes of his life.