this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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The Foundation trilogy is absolute peak science fiction and I should definitely re-read it.
I couldn’t disagree more. The writing is absolute cringe.
For some reason I assumed Asimov would be a good writer, maybe because I read his “Last Question” short story a long time ago and thought it was brilliant.
But Foundation reads like it was written by a teenager. He’s obsessed with describing ghee whiz gadgets and doodads that I couldn’t care less about, the prose is plain and boring, and the themes and characters have not aged well. It feels like I’m watching the Jetsons, except it’s not at all quaint.
I was hoping to be able to look past all this and get lost in the epic scale of the story and universe he purportedly builds, but it just wasn’t there for me.
@nikt @norbert@kbin.social I agree Foundation and its associates are not very well written. But the sequel Foundation's Edge (1982) is brilliant. He's a whole different writer. From the same period there are The Robots of Dawn (1983) and Robots and Empire (1985). I especially like the almost philosophical discussion, in Robots and Empire, between two robots about the meaning of Asimov's great invention, the laws of robotics.