I was planning on buying some books by Isaac Asimov, but he left me with the enormous task of picking one or two out of them all... :-)
A library near my house has two of them: "Azazel" and "Nine Tomorrows". Are these two good? Would you suggest different ones? :-|
Thanks for your comments in advance O:-)
the ones I remember reading...
slanning on 2004-08-30T12:01:36
are "Nightfall" and "Foundation", both of which were good.
Re: Asimov
davorg on 2004-08-30T13:33:19
Don't know anything about "Azazel". "Nine Tomorrows" is a pretty good collection of short stories and contains "The Last Question" and "The Ugly Little Boy" which are both amongst his best.
If you want start reading Asimov my first advice would be "don't bother". Like most of the SF authors who first came to prominence in the 40s and 50s, his stuff seems very dull and uninteresting these days.
But if you really want to do it, then I'd recommend starting with
I, Robot and
The Caves of Steel. The first three books of the Foundation series (
Foundation,
Foundation and Empire and
Second Foundation) are all pretty good. Everyone should read the short story "Nightfall" (warning -
not the later novel of the same name). The novels
The End of Eternity and
The Gods Themselves are both based on good ideas.
Oh, and anything he wrote after the mid-70s is unspeakably bad.
Azazel
pijll on 2004-08-30T17:51:30
Azazel is a collection of stories about Asimov himself and his little demon friend Azazel. Not his best work. You migh find it enjoyable, light reading if you don't read more than one or two stories in one go, but if you can get some of his better work (Foundation, Caves of Steel, I Robot), then read those.
Asimov has written some very good short stories; I haven't read Nine Tomorrows, but it sounds good. I remember reading "The Last Question" in another collection when I began reading SF, and I was very impressed by it then. I don't know if I would still be today, though.
