Thursday 24 May 2012

The foundations of clever dude-ness

Sometimes I fail even by my very lax standards in writing this blog. There are some brilliant gems scattered quite liberally all over the blog, as I am sure, even a non-long suffering reader can tell^^. The question is, should I or should I not add to that list - "What a clever dude Asimov was!!" (Is there some rule somewhere about who can be called a dude and who cannot?) I have been enjoying reading Asimov's massive "Asimov on Shakespeare" lately – basically reading and forgetting almost simultaneously a whole lot of trivia related to Shakespeare's plays, which is totally irrelevant to anything I do or have to do or even want to do!

But, as I said previously, Asimov is just so clever about it, that the massive two volume door stopper is a pleasure to flip thru, and feels much like a conversation with a random stranger on the bus (with whom you wouldn't share anything personal) that just ends up being about 3 hours long. While that tempts me to pick up Asimov on The Bible, I would recommend you to pick up the Foundation Trilogy*, which forms such an important part of my past reading life that while I can barely remember the bare bones plot, I can still remember it was about something- and you could not guess what till you read it^. And, I haven't met anyone who has read the book and disagreed, so let the majority win and just read it – yes? (Good, glad to have you convinced!)

While we are talking about Asimov, how can we not speak about the Robot series? The Three Laws of Robots were, Asimov says, written as a response to the Frankenstein syndrome** - where a scientist would create monsters that would eventually kill the creator, which seemed to have taken over the science fiction world of the time. Now, you tell me, clever dude or what?

 

^^ does anyone remember reading about a half hearted attempt at a book review that mentions the author writing "interestingly" about politics of 4 kinds of creatures? No?

*that was voted, along with Lord of the Rings Trilogy, as the best fantasy of the century.

^ ok, I might have just made that last bit up…

** that Asimov might have referred to by another name, in an introduction to collection of his Robot stories  

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