Do you recommend any old school sci-fi? More than more recent fare?
I just read Isaac Asimov’s 𝘍𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 because it came so highly recommended and is considered by some a foundational pillar of the science fiction genre (it won the prestigious Hugo Award for All-Time Best Series). Even my son was amazed I had not read it yet. Some observations:
Issac Asimov sounds like the name of an elder, but he started writing 𝘍𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 at the age of 21.
I found it to be strangely anachronistic in the technologies that permeated this future galactic empire. For a book written over the span of 1941-51, perhaps the fans forgive:
1) Pervasive cigars, “vegan tobacco” and even snuff. The Surgeon General warnings did not start until 1966, but it’s still a bit odd to see that addiction carrying into the inevitable future.
2) The plot depends on nuclear (fission) economies overpowering those run on “coal and oil” when the nuclear supply fails. No renewables. Solar started in 1954 but the physics was understood in the author’s time. Perhaps there was a popular curiosity at the dawn of the nuclear age for the divergent fates of nuclear and non-nuclear nations?
3) Almost no female characters. There was just one woman in the entire book, the spouse of a commander brought in to serve as a necklace model.
4) Almost no science or science fiction for that matter. Most of the book read like a contemporary portrayal of petty politics, statistical sociology and the economics of trade. There is little richness in the science fiction parts – the space “ships” and “ground cars” are left at that, with not even a visual or technical description beyond those generic terms.
5) Religion persists in its grip on the mind, and it’s fabricated to control the scattered colonies over great distances. Perhaps the ease of the hack sci fi author, L Ron Hubbard, to fabricate Scientology (Dianetics) was on Asimov’s mind.
But most of all, I was struck by how uneventful, uninspiring, and amateur the writing and story line turned out to be. The series of essays, written over a decade, got progressively less engaging and coherent. But do I read this seminal work with a jaundiced eye? Is it unfair to compare to more modern works, and if so, why? It seems to me that the accumulated total of “greatest sci-fi” works is obviously much larger now, and the bar must have been lower back then, and the literary genre more groundbreaking. But, like many old movies, it does not stand the test of time except as a historical time capsule in itself (in other words, if published today under a different name, I suspect it would not be lauded as it was and would probably linger in obscurity). I was left longing for the sculpted prose and imaginative worlds of Arthur Clarke, Larry Niven, Neal Stephenson, Iain Banks, or Kurt Vonnegut.
And now, for the graphic history of sci-fi, Ward Shelly describes his work: “History of Science Fiction is a graphic chronology that maps the literary genre from its nascent roots in mythology and fantastic stories to the somewhat calcified post-Star Wars space opera epics of today. The movement of years is from left to right, tracing the figure of a tentacled beast, derived from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds Martians.
Science Fiction is seen as the offspring of the collision of the Enlightenment (providing science) and Romanticism, which also birthed gothic fiction, crime novels, horror, westerns, and fantasy (all of which can be seen exiting through wormholes to their own diagrams, elsewhere). Science fiction progressed through a number of distinct periods, which are charted, citing hundreds of the most important works and authors. Film and television are covered as well” (the blue lobes, bottom right) — http://www.WardShelley.com
Full size, for all the detail: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/5539817741/sizes/o
The labels for the decades along the top are interesting. The 1940s with “Science Dominant” give way to the 50s with “Sociology Dominant” (𝘍𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 fits this category like an archetype)
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