TaxideaDaisy reviewed The Complete Robot by Isaac Asimov (Robot Series)
Review of 'The Complete Robot' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I think I enjoyed Asimov more as a teenager, not that it aged as badly as some. Would be interested in others' thought on such rereading.
We got The Complete Robot via interlibrary loan to round out our reading/rereading of the Foundation series (we’d read the first three or four around 1980). Asimov’s brief introduction and commentaries felt eccentric and fun, as well as informative. This is a long book but it reads pretty fast. That said, it’s also like the Foundation stories in that some of us find it hard to keep track of all the characters and happenings of so many vignettes told in generally spare prose.
I wish they had printed the story titles at the top of the pages!
These are short stories outside of the Foundation and Robot cycles, so no R. Daneel Olivaw – wait, that’s a lie, he does appear in one story, …
I think I enjoyed Asimov more as a teenager, not that it aged as badly as some. Would be interested in others' thought on such rereading.
We got The Complete Robot via interlibrary loan to round out our reading/rereading of the Foundation series (we’d read the first three or four around 1980). Asimov’s brief introduction and commentaries felt eccentric and fun, as well as informative. This is a long book but it reads pretty fast. That said, it’s also like the Foundation stories in that some of us find it hard to keep track of all the characters and happenings of so many vignettes told in generally spare prose.
I wish they had printed the story titles at the top of the pages!
These are short stories outside of the Foundation and Robot cycles, so no R. Daneel Olivaw – wait, that’s a lie, he does appear in one story, but these are mostly supplemental? precursors? to those tales. We’ll be reading them soon also.
Reading classic scifi in 2020 is especially poignant, because so much of what speculative fiction writers pondered and postulated has come to pass, or affects us or our thinking today. Mostly, that’s depressing.
If I were to pick a favorite, it might be “Sally,” or “Point of View.”
Three and a half stars... would probably have gotten 4 or 4.5 when I was a teen...