This book starts off in quite a disjointed manner, with the introduction of a variety of seemingly unrelated characters. The only thing that they all have in common is that they’re holdless. However, as the book progresses these characters are all weaved together into a relatively cohesive story line. I say relatively because there are…
Category: Book
Asimov’s Mirage
If I was to name one flaw with the Robot City and Robots and Aliens series, it would have to be that they’re not very good. They’re lackluster, have difficult to believe plots, very simple structure, and are overall poorly thought through. Its a similar sensation to that I feel when I read the tie-in…
Buy Jupiter Short Stories
This is another Asimov short story collection. The following stories appear in the book, although I have already read a couple as part of either the Robot short stories or the Nightfall collection of short stories. To be honest these stories aren’t Asimov’s strongest. They entertaining, but they’re not as amazing as some of his…
Books read in December 2009
Bolo Strike Dragonsdawn The Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern Last Human Bolo! Saturn’s Children Foundation’s Friends Isaac Asimov’s Robot City: Robots and Aliens: Humanity Colony
Colony
The Times is wrong about this book. Its not “cruel, cynical and very funny”, its cruel and cynical for sure, but it lacks hope and is overall just depressing. I certainly didn’t feel it was funny. Its strange, I loved the Red Dwarf series, and this book is very similar. I think the problem is…
The Robot City, Robots and Aliens Series
This series follows on from the Robot City series set in Asimov’s Foundation Universe but written by other authors. Overall that first series was weak, and I think the same is true for this series as well. There are a few here that are better than the others, but I’d only recommend this series for…
Isaac Asimov’s Robot City: Robots and Aliens: Humanity
This book is actually the best one of the two robot city series (Robot City and Robots and Aliens). Unfortunately I had to wade through 12 not very good books to find it, and its still not stellar. I’d recommend giving both these series a miss unless you’re obsessed with completeness in Asimov’s Robot universe….
Caliban Series
These are books written in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Universe by Roger MacBride Allen. These books are actually better than the Robot City Series, in that they at least explore issues that Asimov himself touched upon. 1997: Caliban 1998: Inferno 1999: Utopia
The Robot City Series
These are books written in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Universe by other authors. They don’t progress the overall plot of the Foundation series, they just use some of the concepts and characters to tell similar stories. The books in the series are: 1987: Isaac Asimov’s Robot City: Odyssey by Michael P Kube-McDowell 1987: Isaac Asimov’s Robot…
Foundation’s Friends
I was excited when I found Foundation’s Friends the other day, because I thought I’d read all the Foundation books and did not know that this one existed. It is an anthology which celebrates Asimov’s 50 years as a science fiction author, and each author takes their own approach to the Foundation universe. The stories…