Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

I know seems kinda sacrilegious to mention them along with Asimov but...
I was listening to several of the Asimov interviews on Youtube and two points kept coming up in every interview.

First, he's afraid to fly.

Second, he's a prolific writer.

(Also, I was reading the foreword to the 1988 Doudleday edition of the Foundation Trilogy and Asimov starts by pointed out what started as a single story grew into a total of 14 volumes and 1,450,000 words. Later in the foreword, he discusses the prequels and how there was still room between books for additional titles.)

Pinky and the Brian just a calculated marketing ploy mimicking Asimov?

Omph?

I don't really have anything constructive to add here (which is a fact I deeply apologize for) but in terms of KJA and The Hair go, they're prolific alright, in much the same way as the Bubonic Plague was prolific in Europe during the Dark Ages.

I haven't had a chance to read Asimov yet but I imagine the difference is in the attitude to being prolific, i.e. prolific ≠ (good) quality.

Yep, attitude and ability are the big differences here.

Asimov = prolific, talented, and respect for the field.

Anderhack and Bobo = prolific (well, one of them), hacks, and no respect for anything at all, least of all Dune.

Brian (or HLP publicity at least), has made the connection between him not flying and him being in the tradition of great science ficton authors.

Did Asimov have a good reason for not flying?

Have you seen a plane crash? That's a pretty good reason not to fly. You have better odds winning the lottery though. Which is why you should never use lottery winnings to fly somewhere, Hurley!

Mr. Teg wrote:I know seems kinda sacrilegious to mention them along with Asimov but...
I was listening to several of the Asimov interviews on Youtube and two points kept coming up in every interview.

First, he's afraid to fly.

Second, he's a prolific writer.

(Also, I was reading the foreword to the 1988 Doudleday edition of the Foundation Trilogy and Asimov starts by pointed out what started as a single story grew into a total of 14 volumes and 1,450,000 words. Later in the foreword, he discusses the prequels and how there was still room between books for additional titles.)

Pinky and the Brian just a calculated marketing ploy mimicking Asimov?

Omph?

It's entirely possible they are apeing Asimov. If they are, they certainly picked right, no? But if that is what is going on, then its just another example of those asshole's disingenuousness. I guess for that reason I would be likely to believe it, but...

Asimov prided himself on the amount of work he cranked out, and always maintained that he held himself to the most rigorous standards he could imagine. From what I can tell that meant that he allowed editors to make substantive suggestions and corrections to his work, discussed ideas long before he put them to paper, and did actual research to make sure that he had his facts right. More, all of his work was original, not stolen from the mind of one of his greaters.

P&tB plot out a book over a weekend, write it in two or three months, no matter what kind of sacrifices they have to make to get it done, and rely on a team of boot licking toadies to "proof" their work. As far as I can tell that means that they only look for internal consistency, not scientific accuracy or believeabiliy, and they can't even get that right.

Asimov was a pillar of integrity when it came to his prose. His style may throw you, but he was a thorough professional who realized that his art had to have good business backing, or he would be a failure. P&tB have no such standard. They "write" their books to fill a contractual obligation and leave all pretense of creativity and accuracy behind in order to fulfill that contract.

Asimov was also very much into the social aspect of writer fandom, and lived SF as his life's calling. Brian can't even be bothered to travel to fans half the time, and Anderhole really is in this for personal satisfaction and the idolatry that he seems to inspire.

Finally, most of those statements by Asimov about filling in the gaps came late in his career, after he had been eclipsed by younger writers, and when he wanted to do something to make sure that his contribution to the genre that he truly loved would be cemented for all time. I've always believed that he had already done that, but what the hell, its his own legacy and he's entitled to make it the way he wishes.

The men are worlds apart. The devil is truly in the details, no?

I'm a large fan of Asimov, and if the twit twins are even mentioning themselves in the same sentence with his name they should be flogged.

If ya want to know, check out this list 500+ volumes in fields beyond Sci-Fi:
http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/asi ... logue.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Being prolific and being good do not go hand and hand, never have.

Truly monstrous that anyone would even think of this.. Grrrrrrr

my kneejerk reaction is to say that Asimov lived in a very different period of aviation - he was born in 1920,
was a young man during WWII when commercial air travel was more than a luxury and the image of flying
was of thrills & danger & dogfights ....that generation didn't take to air travel the way the next did - my
daddy never set foot on a plane, f'instance .... IDK .... just guessing ....

For what its worth.

http://stason.org/TULARC/education-book ... lying.html

there you go - a combination of whatever phobia the height-thing is,
plus he was from an age when air travel wasn't viewed as a life-necessity ....

good find, thank you !

Ampoliros wrote:Have you seen a plane crash? That's a pretty good reason not to fly. You have better odds winning the lottery though. Which is why you should never use lottery winnings to fly somewhere, Hurley!

And now naked body scanners!

Some stand-up comedian on Comedy Central was talking about those saying he'd rather be caught as a terrorist with one of those, than having guards pointing at the monitor when he went through giggling, something like that.

( Oh yeah, good to see you back, Carlos, you're one of the few people who's nice to me! besides Freakzilla, Omphalos, Sandrider (who all seem to understand the adolescent mind, or at least can put up with it) and occasionally SandChigger.

I see another difference between Asimov and BH&KJA.
Asimov let other writers use his own universes for their own stories. In France, we have an anthology whose title is "Les Fils de Fondation" (Foundation's sons) where Asimov himself introduces stories by younger writers. This means he thought the universes he created didn't belong more to him than to their fans.
BH thinks he inherited every single right about the Duniverse from his father. Therefore he thinks he can do anything of it, even let some uncorrected-proof writer as KJA polluting it. This goes farther : he even denies the long-time fans the right to say anything about this.

There is something else. The Asimov inheritants agreed to publish a trilogy of prequels for Foundation. The chose three confirmed writers, Gregory Benford, Greg Bear and David Brin. The project was kind of successful (I've read the trilogy and thought it was more than readable). But there were no other prequels/sequels/interquels thereafter, meaning the Asimov inheritants said "over". They at least weren't probably asking for more money.

My conclusion is : Asimov, and his inheritants after him, was concerned primarily with litterature and maybe fame ; BH&KJA are concerned primarily with money. This is sad for Dune.

I think there is also a component of "desire for fame" in Brian Herbert, though.

One so strong he doesn't care if he has to ride daddy's literary corpse with the help of a no-talent hack to satisfy it.

After all, he hasn't been a roaring success at anything else he's tried, has he? Insurance salesman/claims adjustor? Hotel maid?

I haven't read any of the non-Asimov Foundation books. That's all I have to say about that.

Freakzilla wrote:I haven't read any of the non-Asimov Foundation books. That's all I have to say about that.

He has a group of books that inhabit the same universe, just set prior to the foundation series. They are going to be incredibly dated because they have to do with robots, but they're pretty good from what I remember.


One thing to ask yourself rhetorically: Would something KJA came up with be used and accredited as the basis for a character in a TV series? Wasn't the terrible robot in Battlestar Galactica programmed with Asimov's 3 laws of Robotics? No, and that's because he would have to give it thought and probably write something down himself.

A Little Galach wrote:

Freakzilla wrote:I haven't read any of the non-Asimov Foundation books. That's all I have to say about that.

He has a group of books that inhabit the same universe, just set prior to the foundation series. They are going to be incredibly dated because they have to do with robots, but they're pretty good from what I remember.

The Stars, Like Dust, The Currents of Space and Pebble in the Sky:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asim ... ire_Series" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I liked them.

I think one reason that Asimov's SF (and non-fiction science writing) was so good was that he credited his readers with intelligence, and wrote accordingly.

KJA does not.

HBJ

I think Brian's work as a hotel maid was amazing. It just blew me away!