Visiting Asimov

Isaac Asimov is one of the earlier authors that I started reading, and since then he has been one of my favorite. I was introduced to science fiction by reading his books and his treatment of the subject was most entertaining.

Here, I must say that I am not a great admirer of science fiction. Science fiction at one level is fantasy and fairy tale repackaged in scientific jargon, never my idea of literature.
on second level despite being related to science, sci- fi in general is a poor judge of the future. There are exceptions to this ofcourse, for example prediction of communication satellites by Arthur C. Clarke in his earlier works, but by and large science fiction misses the future .

This is understandable, as future is irrevocably shaped by unforeseen technological breakthrough.

For example, it is always embarrassing to read about vacuum tubes in 21st century in the Asimov’s novel, but there was no way Asimov or anyone else could have predicted about discovery of semiconductors and use of transistors in computers. Even if technology is not considered, the assumptions behind future of human society are many times quite erroneous.
For example, in almost of Asimov’s books it is assumed that Soviet Russia survived along with capitalist America, again one of the peripheral themes of many of his robot related novels was acceptance of central planning and strict regulation of market supply and demand.
Again in “3001: The Final Odyssey”, Arthur C Clarke has remarked that communism is the best system of governance, the only problem being that it is “too good” for human society.

The delight of Asimov’s work is not his able to predict future, rather it is the logical exploration and deconstruction of a set up, which is intellectually stimulating.
Most of his interesting works are not a guesstimate of future but a commentary on broader themes such as human psychology and social interactions in various situations.
His popular work on Robots while apparently dealing with “robotic psychology”, actually deals with humans, as robots in Asimov's work are just a reflection of humans.
Asimov was a rationalist and as such considered any discussion on existence of God outside the realm of scientific method.
Yet in “The last answer” (one of his best works in my opinion), he has written skillfully on this subject.

He was one of most prolific writer ofcourse. In fact I have hardly read any science fiction except for his works
It is only recently that I have decided to read other science fiction authors. Just finished odyssey series, while the sequels are interesting, they fall by a wide margin of “2001: A Space Odyssey”.

As an aside I do hope that something equivalent to hyper atomic drive is invented, the arbitrary restriction of light speed makes one feel so uncomfortable.