The Hugos: Foundation's Edge

Smart dude, that Isaac Asimov.

Him giant brain win heap big Hugo award 1983. Me think it worth 3 stars on goodreads!

I mentioned already that I liked his robot detective stories when I was a kid, right? Please don't think I'm the lowest common denominator. (I am. I really am.)

For a more insightful review than mine, go here.

Foundation's Edge was not a favourite, nor did I actively dislike it. It's not in my library anymore, but it's readily available if I need it again someday.

It's pretty good, worth my time and probably yours. The whole series, if you please. It's not going to make a lick of sense on its own.

Asimov, Arthur Clarke, and Robert Heinlein were known as 'The Big Three' of science fiction. This might be unfair, but to me Asimov is the third guy. (The Hugo people felt exactly the opposite in 1983, with Clarke's '2010' and Heinlein's 'Friday' nominated but never the bride. Sniff.)

There's few thrills and very little juiciness in this leisurely paced, lecture-filled mystery adventure thousands of years in the future.

Fourth in the lengthy but excellent 'Foundation' series, which has concerned itself with the collapse and rebuilding of a galactic human civilization based on either physical strength or mental force in competition. All under the auspices of the scientific predictions or "psychohistory" of a dead man's hologram. (Hari Seldon, shown here being enigmatic.)

'Foundation's Edge' postulates the formation of a galaxy-encompassing group mind where peace and harmony may be achieved by means of everybody sharing consciousness with everything else.

Yeeurgh.

Do YOU want to feel what a carrot feels while you eat it? I personally have no wish to experience deep sea angler fish sex. Or worse, LOWER life forms! Don't make me use Kardashian neural impulses or swap mentalic energy with Tiger Blood Sheen!

I'm not convinced sharing our every stupid thought is the true road to universal peace.

(PROVE ME WRONG, TWITTER!)

You wouldn't want to live in my head and frankly I don't have enough couch space in there, not even for the weekend. Stop asking!

Asimov's Galaxia model may be superior to rule by brute force.

Or simply a fine excuse for doddering old scholar Janov Pelorat to do the nasty with group-mind aficionado and local hottie Blissenobiarella. (Bliss for short.)

Group-mind girls just LOVE big brains!

And when you're doing it with a group mind, it REALLY is the nasty.

The Hugos: The Gods Themselves

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?

The Hugos: Foundation

Due mostly to the urging of Bookmonkey, I began reading the Hugo award winning novels several years ago. With only three left to finish, I figure I should start reviewing them. Why not share the pomposity? The Hugos are the best sci-fi of the year as voted by several hundred people at Worldcon. The award is named for Hugo Gernsback, founder of Amazing Stories magazine. The first given as a physical award was in 1955, but they also started handing out retro Hugos in 1996. See? I can read Wikipedia. Anyway, the 1946 retro Hugo was given for Dr. Isaac Asimov's 'The Mule'. It's one of the short stories collected in 'Foundation and Empire', the second book in the 'Foundation' series. It features a future galactic society in collapse, off-stage interstellar war, and the Mule of the title. My favorite character was Bayta Darell, first rate 1940's plucky heroine. I am not of the opinion that characters were Asimov's strong suit, but then again he wrote approximately 80 billion books, while I... have not. I rate this thumbs up, with 3 out of 4 stars. Maybe I judge the older sci-fi less harshly (certainly the seventies and eighties had more Hugos I disliked than the fifties did), or maybe it's just that good. This story, this book, this series, and this prolific guy are indeed the 'foundation' of modern sci-fi. 'Star Wars' owes its central government urban planet Coruscant to Asimov's planet Trantor. Emotion-manipulating telepathic mutants in Marvel comics? 'The Mule' has that, too. If it lacks the thrills of modern stuff it certainly doesn't lack for creativity and wealth of concepts. I like his contemporary Heinlein's characters better, but then again I love reading comic books so what the hell do I know?