Continuing the Hugos with a dismal 'treat': Isaac Asimov's triumphant return to science fiction and the winner of the 1973 Hugo award.
Call me a traitor if you must, I didn't think much of this one. (It also won the Nebula award, and was the novel Asimov cited as his personal favourite.)
It may be a joyless slog through the tedious sex lives and monumentally uninteresting jobs of blobs from another dimension, but at least it beat 'What Entropy Means To Me' by George Alec Effinger, a nominee from the same year that is the worst Nebula nominee I have ever read. (I think that book actively HATED me.) So, good thing 'The Gods Themselves' won. I GUESS...
I gave it 2 stars of 5 on goodreads.com. It was o.k.
Frankly, anybody who's heard me complain about C.J. Cherryh knows we haven't come to my least favourite Hugo yet.
I kind of liked the backstabbing scientists in part one fighting over the rights to a perpetual energy machine that is hastening the death of the Earth's sun. But I just completely lost interest with the 'hard' and 'soft' extraterrestrials. (That's what she said!)
It's hard (tee hee!) to imagine, but it proves there's a book with aliens and sex that does NOTHING for me AT ALL. And, oddly, Asimov wrote it in response to criticism that his books never had such things before. Turns out that was for the best. If I want sexy sci-fi I'll find more Piers Anthony, Larry Niven, and Heinlein, thanks.
I was a lot happier as a kid reading Asimov's robot detective tales. Does that guy know robots! Shucks, boy, howdy!
And I know this is a low blow, but that is one dog-barf ugly cover. Seriously. What were you thinking, Nineteen Seventies?
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