My Year in Asimov
Daily Ramble 112: My Year in Asimov
I’ve successfully accomplished a number of goals this year and one of them is that I read through at least 48 books this year. I’ve actually read 51 so far and I just finished what will be my last book by Isaac Asimov for 2017. On the whole, I read 7 Asimov books – all 5 of his Robot series and 2 of 3 from his Empire series – and they’ve all rated as B- or higher, with an average rating of just under a B+. I actually recall reading some of the stories previously such as the first 4 of his Robot novels, but the other 3 stories are completely new for me. With that said, I read those Robot books back during college so this was definitely a fresh read. With B- and higher ratings, I’m happy to say I enjoyed the books and will have to admit that these books from 1950–1985 hold up well. Sure, there are things we’ve learned about space and robotics since these novels came out but the concepts they cover and the way the stories are told are still relevant today. I’d recommend any of them to someone who hasn’t read them before.
Overall Thoughts
As things stand, Asimov is still an icon of science fiction in my mind. His 3 rules of robotics, that he introduced back in the 50s, are still part of the common zeitgeist today in 2017. And the way that he integrated detective tales, love stories, and thrilling murder mysteries into far future settings with different cultures and rules really set him up as a good writer, not just a good science fiction writer. Beyond that, the pacing that these novels take make for quick reads – while my average time to read a book in 2017 was over 6 days, these 7 titles only took about 4.8 days to get through – I zipped right through them.
Ordered List
To put them in order, I start with the first book on the list and the earliest Asimov wrote – I, Robot. Please do not get this confused with the mediocre movie staring Will Smith, this book is so much more than that at it rates on my list of top books I read in 2017.
- (A) I, Robot (1950)
- (A-) The Currents of Space (1952)
- (B+) The Naked Sun (1957)
- (B+) Caves of Steel (1954)
- (B+) Robots of Dawn (1983)
- (B-) The Stars, Like Dust (1951)
- (B-) Robots and Empire (1985)
Interestingly enough, the last book in my list is the most recent one written, and while Robots and Empire was my least enjoyed, it was still a decent read.
Closing Thoughts
From the list I got from Kaedrin.com, I can see that while I’ve finished off 7 of the books, there are still 8 novels left in the rest of the Empire and then Foundation series. I’d like to set a similar goal to the one I had this year to read Asimov over the year, but I’ll get more specific this time…I’d like to finish off the 15 books that make up Asimov’s history of the future. With that in mind, I’ll start with Pebble in the Sky in January.