mstdn.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A general-purpose Mastodon server with a 500 character limit. All languages are welcome.

Administered by:

Server stats:

17K
active users

Daniel Keys Moran

I made a mildly critical comment a while back about Isaac Asimov, and got asked incredulously, did I think I was a better writer than Asimov?

I won't dodge: yes.

But lots of writers were better writers than Asimov, even during his day. His text was clumsy, his plots creaked.

But no one read Asimov for that.

Was Asimov better educated than me? Without a doubt. Was he a better thinker than I am? Without a doubt. He was a genius with an encyclopedic knowledge of the world, of science, of the Bible, of Shakespeare. He was 21 when he created the Foundation series, when he created the idea of psychohistory, which, if bad science, is still one of the most fascinating conceits in all of the history of science fiction.

Yes, I do think I'm better at stringing words together than Isaac Asimov. But so were the majority of the writers who were his peers, during his time, and that without the advantage of having seen the evolution of science fiction from the day of Asimov's birth, to the day of mine. And yet only a few of those writers are still read today, and people will be reading Asimov long after I'm dead.

@fatsam I honestly don't think this could even be reasonably argued against. I love several of his books/stories but almost always for the ideas rather than the prose. (I do really like his voice for non-fiction though.)

@ChukG what was a flaw in his fiction was virtue in his non-fiction.

@fatsam

Asimov was a tremendous influence on my worldview, exposing me early on to concepts like "what does it mean to be human?" via his robot stories. Caves of Steel, especially. Yes, "positronic brains" are shit science, but necessary handwavium to tell the story. Pretty sure his simple prose meant ease of access for preteen me.

A more important lesson was to later learn my hero was a terrible person, a serial sexual harasser.

So, thank you, Isaac Asimov? I guess?