Asimov Complete Stories – Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road

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Title: The Complete Stories #2

Series: The Complete Stories

Author: Isaac Asimov

Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars

Genre: SFF

Pages: 560

Format: Kindle digital scan

Synopsis:

A large collection of short stories from Isaac Asimov.

My Thoughts:

Unfortunately, most of these stories I had already read. So there was almost nothing new and without the shiny of “new”, I can’t say that Asimov’s stories are all that engaging.

Nothing is bad or boring. They just aren’t the type of stories that I want to read again and again. Most of them have a “hook” at the end and if you already know that hook the whole story loses most of its punch. I also found that a large portion of these were longer stories than in volume 1.

I have seen references to a 3rd volume of short stories but as far as I can tell, they were never published. That is too bad because I would like to see a finishing up of all of Asimov’s stories.

Title: The Complete Stories #1

Series: The Complete Stories

Author: Isaac Asimov

Rating: 5 of 5 Stars

Genre: SFF

Pages: 614

Format: Kindle digital scan

Synopsis:

A large collection of short stories from Isaac Asimov.

My Thoughts:

This was a fantastic collection. Last month Gregor Xane was pushing Short Story month/week and I ended up with this collection on my phone.

While not every story was a grand slam, I certainly enjoyed every story. This really showcased Asimov’s ideas, his writing skills and the times that he lived in. In many ways, the optimism of the 50’s just glowed through the words, like gold in a furnace. It kind of made me sad.

On the other hand, some of the predictions and working out of things really made me laugh. Multi-vac, Asimov’s Supercomputer that will solve all the problems, is probably the best at showing this. Multi-Vac just gets bigger and bigger and in many ways becomes Asimov’s Science God. And in one story, that is exactly what happens.

But even while living “in the future” and seeing how Asimov totally got some things wrong, it didn’t lessen, even a tiny bit, the worthiness of this collection. Good writing and clever ideas will win through anything.