I found this column from Locus online that made me think. Graham Sleight decides to re-read some of the Isaac Asimov books that talked to him when he was young and then wrote about his experience in this Locus feature Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Isaac Asimov.
Graham takes some of Asimov’s books to task, dissecting them from the perspective of an adult that is current in technology, fiction and the world of today, looking into the writings of an author from another era, with a style much his own, with a very particular view of the world around him at the time, and the world as he hoped/wished it’d be in the future.
The author of the article is a few years younger than me (he says he was 14 when he discovered Asimov back in ‘87…I was 18 at the time), but being in his 30s, he has a very different view about Science Fiction than he did back then, just as I do, and I guess every reader does after so many years.
My view of Asimov’s writings after so many years (I discovered him when I was about…12 or so, and my first approach to him wasn’t through his SF but through his history books) differs somehow from Graham’s, in that he thinks that Isaac’s non-fiction books should be what is preserved of his large legacy of works, while his fiction books can be safely discarded…I, on the other hand, think that both his fiction and non-fiction books are worth reading for any serious reader…his history books are still a delight to read after 20+ years of my first reading of them, and his fiction books are still able to touch into the hearts and minds of people.
I believe that the major problem is that Asimov isn’t really for everybody…once past a certain place of…formation of the cynic part of a person’s personality, Asimov’s world is too pure and candid. But there’s people who never become so cynic and world-weary, who enjoy the ordered progression of Isaac’s worlds and universes, who still hope that the world around them will become a place of peace and order some day, who believe in the good in humanity…for those, Asimov is still,
And Asimov’s anthologies, where he explains about the people and world and thoughts of the era around the stories that he has gathered are, in my opinion, even more important, because we can’t really understand the stories if we don’t understand the reality surrounding them. Yes, SF is supposed to be just for fun, a nice distraction from the reality around us, but…like any other writing, it’s also a reflex of society and the author, and allows us to understand the time and the people better, if we want to go that way…which I usually do.
So…while I almost-agree with Graham Sleight about how different and…difficult Asimov’s fiction can become when you grow up (oh, sad situation!), I still believe that a lot of people can enjoy it and become fans and, more important, readers who use their reading to engage their brains and souls instead as just escape hatches to run from the world around them.
Technorati Tags: locus online, isaac asimov, graham sleight, science fiction
Tags: Books
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