Science Fiction - Isaac Asimov - The Stars, Like Dust (1951)

Oh shit son! Another post so soon?

So I inaugurated this blog with an Asimov review, and now I have another one for you. I explained in that previous post why I am reading these Galactic Empire novels in this order, so no QQ.

You may be able to tell up there in the title that this book was written in 1951, and god does it feel like it. I don't just mean the scientific missteps (one of which Asimov addresses in an author's note at the end) and the dated ideas like the all-important and much-forgotten "document" occasionally mentioned throughout, but there is something that really does feel like early-fifties science fiction. I get it; the tropes weren't tropes yet, and we weren't so jaded that we needed a better explanation for faster-than-light travel than "HYPERSPACE AND SCIENCE". But it's not even really gosh-wow, like the reviews all over the cover assert. There isn't really much gosh considering that the story begins on Earth (a fallout-riddled Earth at that), and the wow of space is quickly buried in the sheer amount of space travel that takes place. Even the main character, who near the beginning spends almost a whole chapter going on about the majesty of the stars, doesn't seem to really care about it later on. Space travel feels more like taking the bus the longer the story goes on.

But then again, that's Asimov for you. The longer he has to write something, the less enchanted he becomes with it himself, usually resulting in an ending that doesn't hold up to the story hooks at the beginning. This book is only 235 pages, so while the detail begins to slack, the story is all right. But that's all it is: all right.

I know someone may argue that I can't hold it up to the standards of today because it was written so long ago and that it is a "classic", but I really don't think that should preclude it from modern criticism with modern eyes. Sure, it may have been a wonder 60+ years ago, but I read it in 2013. Anyone reading this review is probably reading this book or considering it in this era. The fact of the matter is that it just doesn't hold up as well as other things from that time. That doesn't really mean that it is bad or good. It just means it doesn't have the same feeling to a modern reader that it may have had to a reader contemporary to the time.

8/10

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Science Fiction - Isaac Asimov - The Currents of Space (1952)

You may or may not know this, but a lot of Asimov's novels are all set in the same universe: Robot novels, Empire novels, and Foundation novels, according the to man himself in his Author's Note in Prelude to Foundation. I had that novel for a while, and didn't feel comfortable reading it until I read the others that led up to it. I recently read all the Robot novels, but that's not what this is about. This is about The Currents of Space. Although Wikipedia places this book after The Stars, Like Dust in their page about the Galactic Empire series, the same Author's Note in Prelude as I mentioned earlier places this one first. So I read this one first.

I bought this book, as well as the ones after it and the Robot novels in one fell swoop from Amazon. The idea was that I would read these, and then be able to read Prelude, but once I got through all the Robot novels, I felt like I should deviate away from Asimov for a while. I like the guy's concepts and logic puzzles, but there is only so much lacking description I can take in a book.

The idea of The Currents of Space is that there is a planet of slaves that mine this substance called kyrt. It's described as the BEST MATERIAL EVAR and is used in clothes, machinery, and consumables. For instance, in one scene, a character smokes a cigarette made of kyrt. WTF? Whatever. The idea is that this planet is the only place that can grow this stuff, so the natives are enslaved by the citizens of another planet entirely. The other planet involved, Trantor, is all about universal prosperity for all, but likes kyrt too, so lets the slavery continue. It's crooked and shitty, and someone more invested in international politics than I can try to make comparisons in regards to dynamics between various countries. I'm not interested in that.

One of the things I like about Asimov, even though he lacks a lot of the things I like in fiction (emotive characters and setting descriptions, to name two), is that he is a master of creating mysteries surrounding the science of something. I have a book of short stories that is nothing but that, Asimov's Mysteries, and it is hands-down my favorite by the guy. This book has it's own logic puzzle: a Spatio-analyst has discovered that Florina, the planet where kyrt comes from, is in danger of destruction, and this knowledge is psychic-probed out of him by someone.

One of the things I liked about the early Robot novels,  The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, was that it allowed some things to happen, and then these events were analyzed in a big scene that digested them into a conclusion. This happened several times, so the conclusions were usually wrong, but it helped the reader debunk his own theories on how the mystery plays out and try to figure it out on his own. In other words, there was more thinking than action. It was like Clue, the book. It was fun.

This didn't happen in Currents. This book was mostly action-oriented. Between the rampant murder and the constant state of being on the run, the times when the book did go into thinking mode, especially with the Great Squires and the ambassador, were easily forgotten. I had to flip back more than once to remind myself who the hell Dr. Selim Junz was. There certainly weren't any memorable scenes with him until the end.

Editing wise, the book needed work. There were some typos that literally rendered sentences unreadable. For instance,

"Only who is X? It isn't L Really! I know it isn't I!"

What the fuck? To be fair, it's taken a bit out of context. "X" was the name they used earlier in the book to refer to the person who psychic-probed the Spatio-analyst, since they didn't know who it was. But L? There is no L. What the hell is that trying to say?

On the upside, even though Currents is 239 pages, it doesn't suffer from Asimov Ending Syndrome. Asimov is, of course, one of the most prolific authors of all time, if not the most prolific author. He churned out more books than Land-O-Lakes churns out butter. But once the stories got sufficiently long, the writing would deteriorate and the ending would end up something that feels slapped together last minute. Nemesis and The Gods Themselves had this problem in particular. Both neat logic puzzles and concepts, torn up with a shitty ending. But this book seems to keep itself together... until the epilogue.

The epilogue in this book is unnecessary except maybe to expose more closely the motivations of the antagonist. Which were exposed in the chapter before. I don't know, the epilogue didn't add anything for me but more words to read.

All in all, it wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't great. Readable, but not what I look for in an Asimov novel.

7.5/10