What is amazing to me about Foundation is that Asimov's science of 'psychohistory' is essentially 'big data' analytics - the idea the with a large enough dataset, you can predict trends and outcomes with amazing accuracy, but cannot predict individual actions at all. This has, in the 70 years since he wrote the books, become the basis for business strategy. The fact that Asimov wrote the essence of this in the 1950s is mind-boggling.
I was down to teach data analysis at the beginning of this year. In the end it didn't happen, alas, but I was going to mention Foundation in the first lesson.
Guys, statistics long predates Asimov. "Big data analytics" is just good marketing. If anything, the overall quality of prediction has massively decreased as the volume of data analyzed has increased.
@@chrisanderson7820 bda is a marketing term with no concrete meaning. Machine learning is new and powerful, but nothing Asimov wrote had anything to do with that. The PREDICTIVE power of any analysis, be it applied to small or big data, is powered by Bayesian or Frequentist statistics, both of which predate and inspired Asimov. Haven't you ever wondered at the fact that we are just as terrible now at predicting the future as we were 40 years ago? More data does not equal more predictive power
I agree. My love for Heinlein is equally complicated by his great writing vs his politics and misogyny. But Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Herbert's Dune are the only books I re-read almost every year. Moon is a Harsh Mistress makes me cry every single time when I get to the ending. There are many better written books but I have to give kudos to any author that can evoke emotion, re-read after re-read.
@@BangkokQuizMaster What misogyny in him? He was writing about the evil that men do to women and that somehow makes HIM a misogynist? Sorry but you cannot judge a man just by his writing of fiction. Try reading about him. Learn what he said in real life too, plenty of his stuff is easy to find. Try Spider Robinson"s RAH, RAH, R.A.H. It might interest you.
The Cat Who Walked Through Walls has an impressive and well implemented premise. And I think the short story All You Zombies should be required reading for academic discussion. But yeah, Moon and Stranger are definitely tops. And I grok Stranger as yet another cut above. Influences my thinking still, thirty years after.
Heinlein had several distinct phases. His juvenile phase, his mature phase and his weird phase. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Glory Road, Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough For Love are prime examples of his mature phase but you can see the start of his weird phase in some of them.
I would classify Time Enough For Love as the beginning of his garbage period, but you can see disturbing elements even in Glory Road. Heinlein was a swinger in real life, so it may have just been his views coming into the open.
I found your observation about Asimov's writing style interesting and helpful. It also helped me to crystalize why I'm drawn to it. Come to think of it, I am most frequently drawn to writing that is driven by ideas and dialogue, with a minimum of descriptive imagery; just enough to set the stage.
Asimov always said he could t write about romance or love scenes and murder was always committed “ off stage “ . His writing is always filled with dialogue between his People . I loved his writing it was simple but told of complex things .
"Orphans of the Sky" was originally two short stories published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1941 - "Universe" and "Common Sense". At that time, Katie Tarrant was John W. Campbell's first editor, whose primary goal was to purge all depictions of sex from any story printed in ASF. She didn't, however, get rid of domestic violence, which was barely a concept in 1941. Heinlein was writing for the market that was available to him, and the off-stage violence in OotS was unusual for him. Look at Heinlein's powerful female characters, long before other writers used them: "Mary", the skilled agent partnered with Sam Nivens in "The Puppet Masters"; Caroline Mshiyeni in "Tunnel in the Sky", "Peewee" in "Have Space Suit -- Will Travel", the protagonists in "Podkayne of Mars", "Friday", "I Will Fear No Evil", the numerous strong female characters sprinkled throughout his works. Nowhere is there a mousy, male-ruled housewife, and in a number of places women run things outright -- look carefully at Captain Hilda Corners in "The Number of the Beast/Pursuit of the Pankera", House Speaker Wyoming Knott-Davis from "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", and the Empress of the Twenty Universes from "Glory Road".
yet its funny how one punched out women scene for a joke can unravel that. its like that old farmer joke, "look at that wall i built, but do they call me mcgregor the wall builder? and look at the beautiful plantings and gardens here, but do they call me mcgregor the landscaper? but you eff one goat ..."
'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' was my favorite sci-fi book when I was a kid in high school. "Stranger in a Strange Land' was a close second. I also loved reading Asimov's Foundation books.
This is one of the most interesting reviews I have seen. The books were an eclectic mix, but all were very familiar to me. I really want to comment, though, on The Master and Margarita. I'm not quite sure how I came to buy it originally, but it is one of those books that has had a profound impact on my life. I first read it in college--which was more years ago than I want to admit--but I recently bought a new edition, and need to read it again. It is indeed a masterpiece and I would urge anyone to read it. Your synopsis of it was perfect without giving too much away.
How did I just barely see this? 😭 Thank you for the kind words, of course! And I’m glad to see you’re still going strong on the challenge despite the temptation.
For the most part I've really enjoyed your lists and analysis of your favorite (and not so favorite) SF books. I'm 63 and have read literally thousands of SF books. I have to say I'm amazed that you have not read more Heinlein and especially look forward to your opinion of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" as it's probably my favorite SF book of all time. Anyway, enjoy watching your videos even though our SF tastes are quite a bit different.
On Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky, you are so spot on to point out the misogyny and violence against women. I come from the generation Heinlein was writing for, and still, it didn't always sit right with me. I applaud your commitment to giving honest review of subjects that you have no practical time-contextual experience with, that is a very difficult path and rife with peril but you bravely take it on. Much respect. His "Glory Road" is one you might tryout one day, It is in my estimation a truly great adventure story for someone who came from my generation and someone who is himself a patriarch. Cheers.
Glory Road was great, maybe a bit sexually advanced for a 10yo, but ended up lending some ideas I still carry as useful. Heinlein IRL was a swinger before it was cool, so, there is that if someone wants to judge him as a person.
I liked Glory Road when I was in Jr High, but for me, it really did not age well. Very tween wish fulfillment fantasy chosen one stuff that I’ve read/seen so much of it turns me off if not done exceptionally well these days. For someone who read a lot of Heinlein in Jr High, I have never heard of Orphans of the Sky, but I have read/seen other works based on the concept of a generation ship that the population has forgotten it is living in a ship. I don’t remember what the main one was kicking around my brain, but most recently it was used in an episode of the Orville.
I really appreciated Asimov's efforts to tie together his Elijah Bailey/R Daneel Olivaw universe with the Foundation universe. His expository style carried along with direct prose made him a wonderfully engaging writer. He was always came across as a humble man but clear about what he believed.
Well said. Exactly how I experience Azimov writing. The Elijah Bailey and R.Daneel Olivaw relationship is incredibly fun to read. I really grew to like R. Giskard - I wish Elon Musk could develop 2 Robots with the same demeanor , humans need help.
It was in the 80’s (I believe) that he decided to put the Robot series and Foundation series together as being in the same universe. He admitted there were some incompatibilities, especially with his really early works, but he didn’t feel like going back to fix them. So he simply asked his readers to remember that combining the two was never his original intent.
@@AcmePotatoPackingPocatello Elon musk doesn't develop anything but Elon Musk - he hires smart people to do the work and works hard to take the credit.
I agree with his (the commentator’s) point about Heinlein: he’s a very talented writer, but I struggled with his personality and values. 😩👍👍🏻👍🏽👍🏾👍🏿 And I remember these aspects from reading Heinlein decades ago, maybe four or five decades ago.
That is all from a complete falsehood about him. His writings got to be too much after 1970 or so due to severe illness and pain, and pain killers. And really a tragic life from the start. But none of it was literal. He wanted to show things and make you think, not accept. Big differences.
Good on you for being 'cautious' about the philosophy that Heinlein promoted. When I learned that he 'hung out' with L Ron Hubbard and participated in "questionable" activities, I began to look very closely at the world view he presented. Check out the book "Strange Angel" about the misfit JPL founding father Jack Parsons. Hubbard figures prominently in the tragedy of Parson's life. Heinlein was 'along with' Hubbard in dealing with Parsons and Thelema. Stay safe!
You really nailed Asimov's appeal: complex and interesting ideas conveyed in direct, elegant prose. Much of his nonfiction is the same. It took Asimov's book on the bible to prod me into reading the Old Testament. Ton--Bungay is now on my TBR. Excellent video. Good luck on your 100 book challenge! I should do the same the same thing...
Heinlein was of his time. Don’t judge these authors by today’s standards. The two books you mentioned but are missing are potentially his best. This author was one of my gateways to Sci-fi. Very readable.
I hadn’t heard of Tono-Bungay. Again, your reviews are detailed and a pleasure to hear. Wow, that 100 book challenge is amazing. I might do that and document it.
The lighting really captured the Sci-Fireplace Vibe. I really liked the whole vid. I've not gotten any real review/ feedback on Foundation since I was a teen & people were recommending it. Back when it wuz all we had. It's nice to think that they may be more readable than I remembered. The Bulgakov hasn't grabbed me yet. I've got that complete translation, but don't know enough about Russian gov't & cultural in-jokes (It's part of the fiber, like Dante.) When I've tried in the past I felt like I was missing something. Glad you conquered it! Good luck on your holy mission! I hope you've got a little wiggle room built in for "Great Deals & Opportunities too Unique to Pass up!!"
The Inferno comparison is very appropriate. A lot of the satire doesn't port that well to 2022 unless you happen to have deep knowledge about the cultural milieu of the time, which I don't. It is worth reading to the end even though it can be tedious.
In 7th grade I read Foundation Trilogy. That was 1965 a.d. All the books associated with the characters from Bailey. the detective, and the robots Daneel and Giskard of the Robot series to the Foundation Trilogy. And beyond. Clearly written. Cleverly plotted. Thoroughly enjoyable characters that you care about. Something Iain Banks couldn't quite do. Nor Philip K.Dick. Nor Heinlien Nor Clarke Frank Herbert did it with DUNE only of that series. But Frank Herbert's protagonist in Whipping Star, Dosadi Experiment was great. Loved him. Azimov tho was a master of likeable characters.
Judging Heinlein or any author by today's standards when they are from a totally different era will skew your opinion. Even in some of Heinlein's later work where he is clearly placing women in positions of authority and as leaders he sometimes writes women more from a early 20th century man's point of view.
Asimov was a poorer writer, I believe, but he had a vastly bigger imagination and contributed much more to social discourse. I believe he was far smarter than Arthur C Clarke, too, though Clarke would definitely think otherwise -- as would Heinlein. Those two had too much ego. Asimov was all ideas. His characterizations of people were from dialogue, rather than action. His writing had only limited physicality. Mostly he wrote as if everyone related to being up in their head all the time. I do.
@@Duck_Dodgers Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke are considered the Grand Masters of Sci-Fi (though I would include Lem, as well). So if you think Asimov is for children, you're obviously missing quite a bit, conceptually. If you're referring to his early Robot series, then yeah, that is largely YA material. But he was the most prolific writer of the three and had dozens upon dozens of books, fiction and non-fiction, and was a scholarly researcher in his own right. I'll agree his fictional characterisations ran a bit flat, and his plots were more cerebrally dramatic than action filled. But he was by far the smartest of the three, and the least cynical, and his books leapt through logical theory pretty quickly. If you don't keep up with the actual science, you'll always lose the plot, because that's what most of his stories were about, theory and philosophy.
STAND YOUR GROUND. I grew up with Heinlein, and he'll kind of always have a special place in my heart because of that. But re-reading him as an adult is harrowing sometimes. If you think he's misogynistic now, I guarantee you A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND is most definitely not gonna change your mind. And I say that with a heavy heart. It was one of my favorites for years.
I met Heinlein very briefly at the World Science Fiction convention in 1976. I was part of a group that attended with Sally Rand, noted fan dancer of yore. She attended the convention because Sally had gone to school with Heinlein and his brother. Her younger half-brother and his wife (Hank and Martha) were noted midwestern SF fans. We became friends through each of us having a close friendship with SF author Mike Resnick who, with his wife, were also part of that group.
Much of Heinlein's early output was seemingly aimed at a teen audience, elsewhere someone described it as juvenile, though there may be adult moments. His move towards more thoughtful, even progressive, liberal literature began for me (in the order in which I read them!) with ''Glory Road'' (1963) and was at a peak with ''Stranger in a Strange Land'' (1961). If you haven't read ''Stranger... '', you cannot ''get'' Heinlein. His best known work, because of the Hollywood movie, is ''Starship Troopers''. Both the book (1959) and the movie (1997) are deeply ironical and are often dismissed as fascist because of the failure to recognise this. And here's the nub: Heinlein tells a story about the human condition, but does not spoon-feed obvious morals to the reader. In ''Orphans of the Sky'', I'm fairly certain that Heinlein is testing the reader's inclination to go along with the portrayal of misogyny, rather than exemplifying it as a normative social construct; it is classic Heinlein. While Heinlein's work is woven around progressive morals and can get quite raunchy, Asimov's is woven around hard science and potential social consequences. In terms of predicting 21st century hardware, nobody else from that era has come close. Arthur C Clarke made a couple of pretty amazing predictions, including a patent for geo-stationary satellite communications but Asimov's novels and particularly short stories are full of stuff that we now use on a daily basis. From the end of the 1950s, Heinlein's novels were more literate and much more complex than Asimov's. The latter excited my awareness of science, while Heinlein manifested my liberal tendencies, contrary to most people's reading of him.
I love the Master & Margherita, glad you enjoyed it. Which translation did you read? Some are based on an incomplete text first smuggled out of USSR, missing some good scenes. But even the incomplete versions are great (includes my favorite translation, Mirra Ginsburg).
The later Heinlein books are all like one long novel, and his writing, never very psychologicially deep or stylistically dynamic, settled into a cliched formula. A wise, wealthy, near omnipotent, ancient patriarch pontificates; kinda meta, as the kids say nowadays, Heinlein living his dream novelistically. But he covered a lot of territory w/ consistently good quality in his earlier years. His juvenile novels were very satisfying to me as a kid, and really hooked me on reading. And with his engineering/practical turn of mind, a number of products/trends have come to be in real life: water beds, slidewalks (mainly in airports, but I think of him when I ride one), awareness of ecology, potential theocratic dictatorship in the US, loosening of sexual mores.
I'm 64 now, and I did most of my sci-fi reading while a teenager. I've read the "Foundation Trilogy". I remember having a REAL hard time getting into Asimov, but it was somewhat rewarding when I did. I guess. Heinlein was just a lot easier for me to read as a teen. I just read the more juvenile books, "Starship Trooper", "Door Into Summer" and one or two others.
@@cag19549 I'm also amazed at the indignity of a lot of our youth of how horrible it was to use the atom bomb to end World War II. People in my father's home town, would read about people they knew, once or twice a week dying in the Pacific. They have no idea of what living throuth the tragedy of a war is all about. I went over to Japan in 2013 and, probably I shouldn't, but I let it be known that I do not, and never will apology for using the bomb.
@@cag19549 Bookpilled clearly, and quite transparently and honestly identifies himself a left-wing. Fair enough. But I tried to message him quite privately about his view and was confronted with an overly emotional response. So, I don't think he's interested in a rational analysis of anything, including something as mundane as science fiction. Also, I have to say, that the books he points out as, in his opinion, the top of the league of science fiction, while I admit that they have excellent prose, are just not all the interesting of a read, "Roadside Park", "Solaris", "Frankenstein", and more.
Great reviews. I have read all of Heinlein"s library except about 6 titles my favorite is "door into summer" BTW it would take me probably 3 years to read 100 books. It will be so cool to follow you on this journey.
DUDE!! I’m also NOT a Heinlein fan, but you gotta read “Stranger…” and the backstory of Heinlein’s attitude about it! Seriously! It practically (and thoroughly, ironically) chronicled the heart and soul that drove the 60’s!! That book was transformative to myself, and certain of my closest friends.
When I read Asimov's foundation trilogy as a teen, I was familiar with Gibbon's The Rise & Fall of the Roman Empire, and remember Asimov's ideas as vividly as any physical description. Asimov's basic idea that humans as individuals cannot be predicted, but humans in large enough numbers can be -- reflective of Shakespeare's famous line "There is a tide in the affairs of men" combined with fascination with Roman history which effected much 50's sci fi, such as Lest Darkness Fall, sets the cultural environment that made Asimov's Foundation instantly popular.
Wow, I read the Bulgakov about 30(?) years ago and now I've got to read it again. Your description of it reminds me a GREAT deal of The Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin. There's a big fat NYRB edition of that one out there and it is well worth the time and effort. And good luck!
I've read Sorokin and you have a point, but I think there's that Russian Fabulist tradition thing in lots of other former Soviet/Eastern Bloc writing, SF or otherwise - both Lem and the Strugatskys display this at times too.
Whoah. Asimov is one of my all time favourite authors. Including his short stories. His characters are mostly likeable and his humour often comes through
When I was 11, i read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (then only a true trilogy) followed immediately by Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Those two books together sent me down a rabbit hole, specifically in regards to religion, for the next decade or so. Neither are peak science fiction writing, but they formed such a large part of my worldview it's hard not to love them. Stranger is among my top 5 books.
I feel like adding to your Master & Margarita description... For me reading it was SO much FUN! There's this flourishing imagination let loose that I'm bummed you didn't mention. It felt so... free, perhaps from Bulgakov's knowing that it might never be published (although that may be his style, I don't know, it's the only one I read by him so far). One of my favourites ever, honestly blew me away
This one as written as two novellas in 1941. Now , Heinlein was quite good with short stories in the 1940s on the pages of Astounding Science Fiction. His best novels were in the 1950s, Double Star and Door into Summer are his best. His young adult novels , excluding Rocket Ship Galileo, are very good , better than any other young adult SF being written , at the time. His last really good SF novel was Star Ship Troopers , even with odd social setting. Stranger in a Strange Land is awful , tho got a popular following , for some reasons. Moon is a Harsh Mistress is kind of OK but he is starting with intrusive Soap Boxing which is awful, forget anything after Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Misogyny , curious, in that story, but I don't recall it being common in Heinlein , maybe a few others tho don't recall one, his star ship captains in Star Ship Troopers where all women, tho unlike The Forever War where they were side by side troopers with the men.
Last month, having seen these on your channel, I read Inside Outside by Philip Jose Farmer and (I think I saw this on your channel) A Werewolf Among Us by Dean Koontz. Both have phenomenal covers and are very good books too. Thanks
@@peterpuleo2904 Yes, Farmer is awesome. If you haven't read the Riverworld series, please, get some time and do it. I loved it and changed my viewpoints of the world in high school.
Yes, Elna, read Riverworld by Farmer. It really gives an unique perspective on many topics, and it changed (or started to change) my understanding & view of religion, greatly.
I'd agree with several other commentators here, in saying that 'Stranger in a Strange Land' is just not a great book. If you want to read it for 'completeness', fine - otherwise, I wouldn't bother. However, 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' is (imo, of course) is an excellent 'yarn' - and easily, Heinlein's best work. If one was to read only this one Heinlein novel, it would be time well spent. (I'm writing this as child of the '60s, who read absolutely everything RH wrote, as a child. I loved his stuff, then - as an adult, my perspective on his work has changed...)
Having grown up with Heinlein and more recently working my way through multiple juveniles and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress you are missing something. His writing shows always the greatest respect for women and believes they should be put on a pedestal. Any man that treats a woman poorly or is disrespectful is not a man at all. The women in his novels are generally independent, smart intelligent and certainly not laughed at. It has been a long time since I read this particular book but now I need to go read it to see if you are correct. Chance are he was making a point on how low these men were to treat women so poorly.
Chanced into your channel and I am impressed, and subscribed. I love hearing someone talking about books, especially science fiction, and enjoy listening while working at my desk (Work work, or hobby work). Brian Aldiss did a MUCH better send-up of the concept behind Orphans of the Sky, titled "Starship" or "Non-Stop" in the UK in 1958. Heinlein published Orphans in 1963. Read the original, please. At least, I think it is the first book on the topic. Aldiss was an amazing and thoughtful author.
Do try Door into Summer & Double Star. You might feel better about Heinlein. Of course, he did get so pedantic after Stranger in a Strange Land. I didn't care for SiaSL either, I do have to admit. I am not sure he is as much a misogynist as you have concluded. Anyway, think about DiS & DS. Yours, Dana
I used to be a pretty big Heinlein fan, and reread many of the books every few/five years. But it's been a while and so a recent revisit was after a longer time than usual. Based on that recent revisit, I'd say don't bother with Stranger, but can still recommend Harsh. But his long-winded personal/political monologues are present in all the post-juvenile / later works and tend to weigh all those books down to a considerable extent, even if one is sympathetic to some of the underlying notions. Harsh has a good premise, decent plot and characters, and isn't overwhelmed by the monologues, though some are still present. The fairly direct, much later sequel to Harsh (The Cat Who Walks Through Walls) does not hold up as well, btw. I would, however, say that 70 years on, Heinlein seems to be proving to be a better futurist than Clarke or Asimov.
I don't know anything about this channel, but "sci-fireplace" is a good enough reason to sub. Edit: But then you ruined it by complaining about "misogyny".
Asmiov is often considered the best Sci-fi writer of all time (or at least one of the top 3-4) and Heilein has 1-2 landmark books that shaped millions of people's lives. Sci-fi book reviewer: "I've only read one short story by Asimiv", "Have not read Stranger in a Starnge Land" Advice: stop whatever you are doing and read every book by both authors. Until then, your credibility is in question. I know this may sound harsh, but you'd never visit a doctor that hadn't treated a common cold before. However, do keep up the reviews and I'll keep watching. Thank you.
If you haven't read it, you may want to give The Gods Themselves by Asimov a chance. It's my favorite of his. The concept behind the book is brilliant and it contains one of the best depictions of a truly alien culture/universe.
Sorry you didn’t get the “wink” that Heinlein put in Orphans in the Sky. He has done this in other books, although maybe not to this extent. It’s his way of poking the reader to really think about what was written, that “heroes” may not be perfect, but are shaped by their environment and culture. As you said, this story doesn’t belong in the juvenile series. Yes, Heinlein fans are very protective of him, partly because he was so far ahead of his time, sometimes shockingly so. If you grew up in the ‘50’s as I did and started with his juveniles then moved on to his adult stories, you would probably have a different perspective and appreciation of his vision, his Future Histories. I would recommend Starship Troopers (a lot different than the movie), Time Enough For Love (sequel to Methuselah’s Children), Number of the Beast (Lots of winks), The Door Into Summer (He does show some demons left from his first marriage), Farnham’s Freehold (ditto…difficult to appreciate), and last but not least- Job: A Comedy of Justice ( Wow!). No offense, but if you haven’t even read Stranger in a Strange Land or Moon is a Harsh Mistress, you really don’t know Heinlein. Hopefully, after reading more of him, you will see why Heinleiners are the way they are. For short stories, I would highly recommend “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag”, and “All You Zombies-“ Lastly, for sheer fun, “Magic, Inc.” Happy reading.
@@etsequentia6765 Really? Well, I think you are half right in that he aggressively promotes ideas, but it would help if you provided examples of the other. Lazarus Long, Dr. Jacob Burroughs and Zeb Carter don’t fit in that category, IMO.
For me, this video is a bit of an education on how we all see something differently. I read to see where the author is going to take me and what new things I'm going to see along the way. I most likely pick up on underlying themes along the way, but they are not my main focus.
Great video! I was super exited about Asimov's trilogy but I had to drop it. im an architect and the lack of description and interaction was so much that I couldn't keep reading it.
I was a Russian major, and read the Master and Margarita for a lit class (thank God we read this one in English! Would not have had the strength to look up vocabulary and follow the story). Loved it and have been meaning to re-read it this many years later. Good luck with the challenge. Question: what if your app tells you to read the second book in a series you haven't read? Not sure my nature would allow me to do that 😆
Heart of a dog by Bulgakow is really good too. Its just 150 pages and very different to Master i Margarita but i really enjoyed it too so u might wanna give it a chance.
Asimov wrote that the entire foundation series includes all of the following books ... Asimov - foundation series These books are all woven together so you are missing much of the story which requires all of them to follow. 1.) The Complete Robot 👍🏻?? Robot Dreams- 👍🏻2.) the Caves of Steel- 👍🏻3.) the Naked Sun 👍🏻4.) the Robots of Dawn 5.) Robots & Empire 👍🏻6.) the Currents of Space 👍🏻7.) the Stars Like Dust 👍🏻8.) pebble in the sky 👍🏻9.) prelude to foundation 👍🏻10.) foundation 👍🏻11.) foundation & empire 👍🏻?? Forward the Foundation 👍🏻12.) second foundation 👍🏻13.) foundations edge 👍🏻14.) foundation & earth
Also, for what it's worth, try to read the original version of Stranger In A Strange Land... the expanded version is (ALSO MY OPINION) unnecessary. Starship Troopers is actually one of my favorites (of Heinlein) mainly because the pacing is tighter and there's only one chapter of Heinlein egregiously lecturing the audience.
Matt, my friend, I am rather sad you didn't appreciate Orphans in the Sky, since I did. I saw the ridiculousness of sexism in that book (including the end) as more of a satire and statement about how humanity still hasn't learned or recovered from it's immaturity. But I could be adding that in my head to get over the ridiculousness of it. Will have to re-read it at some point. Also I hope, very surreptitiously, the books convert you into a "book reader" and not just a "book buyer" and you go on to continue past these 100. Thanks for your videos as always
I don't find Heinlein always enjoyable, but I will be forever grateful for a concept elucidated by one of his characters (a stand-in for himself): a nuclear power plant is no less natural than a beaver dam.
LOL 🤣! A minute in and I was thinking, "the only book of his that I'd really recommend is Stranger in a Strange Land", then, "Maybe The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Heinlein (the Puppet Masters) was the first book I ever read that I picked out myself, and as an 8 year old it fascinated me, but yes he's not that good when compared to his contemporaries. I read everything he wrote until he lost his mind, but by the time I was about 12 I recognized that he was writing specifically for teenage boys. Just for reference because the movie is so popular, Starship Troopers is worth a read, if only to understand how little the movie used.
I am modifying my comment on Heinlein and I'm going to cut him some slack in light of the era he was from. Am re-reading "The Roads Must Roll", and found, yes he was chauvinistic - like a lot of sci-fi writers from then, but he presciently created a character much like Donald J. Trump. This was the renegade engineer who took over by installing cronies and like minded everywhere he could. The only flaw to this story was Heinlein underestimated how easy it would be to restore order. So read Heinlein, but with the times and his personality in mind. I was too hard on him.
Really enjoyed this video. Asimov is my favorite writer and while I agree with you that he is prone to dialogue and ideas vs. imagery, not everyone remembers imagery quite the same way. I always took ideas from Asimov, and I think that might be why I preferred him over Heinlein and Herbert, etc. Thanks for the video. Made me want to sit down in an arm chair, drink coffee, and discuss psychohistory with you.
Enjoyed the video, interesting to hear your thoughts on Second Foundation, I didn't pick up on your opinion that this was much the weaker in the trilogy. I was probably very young at the time, I was about 10 when I started reading SF. I always loved Asimov's dialogue style enabling me to visualise my own world for his characters to fit in. To this day (almost 50 years on) I struggle with heavy narrative exposition. You are right to read 100 books before acquiring many more, I did what you are doing from about age 20 to age 50 and now I wont read more than 10-15% of the SF books I own before I die.
I empathize with your conundrum about buying books that remain unread. I probably have about 100 books, fiction and nonfiction, sitting lonely and neglected on my shelves, and yet I must fight the temptation to buy more. Bibliophiles have that in common, even if all they collect are cheap, raggedy paperbacks.
We should all remember that Heinlein and Asimov were the products of their times. Also remember that Asimov was the more educated. Asimov and Heinlein were the two authors I began reading pretty close to the first. I just finished wading through "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress". I did like the way he wrote like russian-not-speaking-english-well. The computer stuff was, as far as I could tell, pretty advanced for that time. But, to me it was a slow read. I have also read a lot of Asimov and consider the Foundation books to be timeless. My first Heinlein was Have Spacesuit Will Travel which was serialized in Boys Life magazine. Heinlein was also ex-military and he wrote a lot of his books with the same no-nonsense Manner. I found his treatment of women to be small-minded. The final difference between them is the fact that Heinlein began writing to make a living since he'd had a heart attack and the docs told him to not do anything too heavy. Not what they say these days! Asimov began writing as a teen because he loved it so much.
TH-cam recommended your channel to me and I just wanted to drop you a note and let you know how much I am enjoying your reviews and your approach to them. I also couldn't get through any E.E.Doc Smith I have tried, so I know we are simpatico. If you are not familiar with Barrington Bayley, I reccomend Fall of Chronopolis and Collision Course, two books with fascinating approaches to time travel. The female characters are badly drawn, but not as bad, I think, as the Heinlein book you review here. Best.
People have always told me about foundation. It sounded a bit too theory/dialogue heavy but I saw the apple tv show. Hear mixed reviews from fans of the books. But the performance from Lee pace as brother day was so spectacular and not a traditional villain. Very methodical in how they manipulate their empire and each other. I had to jump on the series and went out and purchased that whole series and currently reading them. I stopped reading the three body problem series (another recommended series by a youtuber) just so I can get this series through the end
I started reading Heinlein in 1960. I was 11, and the juvenile sci-fi he wrote was easy reading. You have to remember, Orphans in the Sky was a reworking of two stories he'd written more than 20 years earlier. I recommend Glory Road, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, and Farnham's Freehold, as better examples. There are several better examples of early efforts at the genre., Murray Leinster, Alfred Bester, L Sprague de Camp, etc. Foundation was also an early entry in the Sci-Fi sweeps, appearing in 1951, when ideas about space, space travel, and interstellar realities were still developing. The sequels, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation, followed in the next couple years. The 4th book wouldn't arrive until 1983, 32 years after the first. Everybody seems to agree, the first two books are better. There are some giants that don't get much talk, why not feature those. I've read somewhere between 10K and 12,500 books, never heard of Bulgakov. He died almost a decade before i was born, so no surprise. However, The Master and Margarita plays more as a morality tale, than anything Sci-Fi, or Fantasy. It is typical of a lot of reflective literature common to the times of his life. Here is a list I recommend to readers of Science Fiction: The Best in Science Fiction 01 P H I L I P K D I C K Eye in the Sky The Man in the High Castle The Game-Players of Titan Now Wait for Last Year The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch The Unteleported Man Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Ubik A Scanner Darkly 02 R O B E R T A H E I N L E I N The Puppet Masters The Rolling Stones Tunnel in the Sky Starship Troopers Stranger in a Strange Land Glory Road Farnham's Freehold The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress 03 A R T H U R C C L A R K E Islands in the Sky Childhood's End The Nine Billion Names of God 2001: A Space Odyssey (series) Rendezvous with Rama Imperial Earth The Songs of Distant Earth The Hammer of God 04 F R E D E R I K P O H L The Space Merchants The Age of the Pussyfoot Gateway (series) Beyond the Blue Event Horizon Heechee Rendezvous The Other End of Time The Boy Who Would Live Forever 05 R O G E R Z E L A Z N Y Lord of Light Nine Princes in Amber (series) Jack of Shadows Today We Choose Faces Doorways in the Sand Deus Irae (with Philip K Dick) 06 K U R T V O N N E G U T Player Piano The Sirens of Titan Cat's Cradle Welcome to the Monkey House Slaughterhouse-Five Breakfast of Champions
07 R A Y B R A D B U R Y The Martian Chronicles The Illustrated Man Fahrenheit 451 A Medicine for Melancholy Something Wicked this Way Comes
08 L A R R Y N I V E N Ringworld (series) A Gift from Earth The Patchwork Girl Flatlander 09 U R S U L A K L E G U I N The Wizard of Earthsea (series) The Left Hand of Darkness The Lathe of Heaven
10 I S A A C A S I M O V Pebble in the Sky Foundation (series) The Gods Themselves + 10 Honorable Mentions: JRR Tolkien The Hobbit The Lord of the Rings The Silmarillion Harry Harrison The Stainless Steel Rat (series) Make Room! Make Room! (basis for Soylent Green) West of Eden (series) Jerry Pournelle The Mote In God's Eye w/ Larry Niven Lucifer's Hammer Oath of Fealty Go Tell the Spartans Philip Jose Famer Riverworld (series) A Barnstormer in Oz Dayworld (series) Terry Pratchett Discworld (series) Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman) William Gibson Necromancer (series) All Tomorrow's Parties Poul Anderson The Psychotechnic League (series) Tomorrow's Children (series) Frank Herbert Dune (series) Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (series) James SA Corey Leviathan Wakes (series) Piers Anthony Macroscope L Frank Baum the Oz books (series, including Ruth Plumly Thompson) Grandfathers of the Genre: M A R Y S H E L L E Y Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818) The Last Man (1826) J U L E S V E R N E Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) From the Earth to the Moon (1865) Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869) The Mysterious Island (1874) H G W E L L S The Time Machine (1895) The Island of Dr Moreau (1896) The Invisible Man (1897) War of the Worlds (1898) The Sleeper Awakes (1910) K A R E L C A P E K R. U. R. (1920) A L F R E D B E S T E R The Demolished Man (1953) The Stars My Destination (1956) M U R R A Y L E I N S T E R Proxima Centauri (1935) Conquest of the Stars (1952) S T A N I S L A W L E M The Man from Mars (1946) The Magellanic Cloud (1955) The Star Diaries (series) (1957) L S P R A G U E D E C A M P & F L E T C H E R P R A T T The Incomplete Enchanter (1941) The Carnellian Cube (1948) The Castle of Iron (1950) Wall of Serpents (1960)
Just want to add a comment on your Heinlein selection, Orphans in the Sky. I read this. I read this in junior high in the 70's. I vaguely remember this now that you mentioned. A lot what you mention must have flown over my head at the time. The only thing I remember about it now was some ignorant character throwing books into an energy converter. I also remember thinking how "different" this was to find in my school's library. As a young teen, I thought it was kinda cool. I don't think I was influenced too badly by it. Heinlein at his best would be Time Enough for Love, Number of the Beast, or Job: A Comedy of Justice.
Love Robert Heinlein! Love the Lazarus Long books. Do you not like his pushing individual initiative and responsibility? He was my first sci fi and still my fave.
Nothing we take for granted in a modern society comes from individual initiative or personal responsibility. Try building yourself a car or a computer from unprocessed ores and rare earths and you'll see how much you depend on the hugely complex systems of interdependency and social responsibility that allow us in the West to live in the comfort we do. Individual initiative or personal responsibility are notions used by the top 10% to trick the rest of us into accepting our meagre share of the wealth we create with our work, as a function of their lack of "pep" and not pulling their socks up high enough. Heinlein was just a standard rich, white, "conservative", Neo-fascist, otherwise known in the states as a "Republican" 😅
Your reviews gave me something tp think about; thanks. Without thinking much, I would have instantly answered your query........Heinlein, obviously. IMO, he was a much better writer than Asimov, but I was young when I read them. Foundation seemed OK, but contrived and impersonal. There were no characters to connect with. Heinlein projects a very strong character, he loved cats, he was quite libertarian, and he was not afraid of being controversial. He seemed romantic to me, but I was a young male back then in the 60's. I'd second your impulse to read the two other Heileins you mentioned, although I only read them once. The Puppet Masters impressed me as a youngster, too, and the service aspect of Starship Troopers was interesting. As an update of it (The Forever War by Joe H.), I think Joe produced the more impressive work. I'm glad you mentioned Wells and his social novels. I'd also recommend Kipps, and a couple of his socialist/utopian novels, like In the Days of the Comet, and Men Like Gods. Wells had an amazing mind and is a very underrated novelist. I never really considered the misogynistic aspects of Heinlein, but now that you mention them, I have to say I suspect you are correct. He may not have been a very nice guy, although he certainly was talented. I've never even heard of your Russian guy. I'll have to give it a shot. I'll also be curious to hear what you have to say about the rest of the Dune series. The one where the son of Dune turns into a worm lost it for me....I DNF'd the rest of it. The first couple I enjoyed.
I used to really love Heinlein. Then I read (I think it was) The Cat Who Walks through Walls. The protagonist is an author who states (paraphrased) that he doesn't need to be original. He just files off the serial numbers and produces the same book and the masses are happy to pay him the big bucks. I thought about the past few Heinlein novels I'd read and thought, "Yep. I can see that."
Stranger in a Strange Land is a bit different, as I already see mentioned in other comments. Overall, however, I am in agreement with your assessment of Heinlein overall. He has always struck me as a person it would be unpleasant to know and hang with. H G Wells. I like that you mention he is a timeless writer. I feel his stories are at home in any age, and he is a much better writer than he seems to get credit for being. I also agree, mostly, with your assessment of the Asimov initial Foundation trilogy. It is a very smooth read, even with all the detailed looks at the Seldon plan. As to the tenor of the books. I seem to remember feeling that the novels greatly reflected the persona of the narrator. Certainly the big picture of Hari Seldon's science, mostly, didn't make examination on an individual basis all that necessary, except where certain fixed points in history were predicted to occur. That could be wrong, since I also agree that it is a difficult set of tales to exactly recall, even though they might be engaging while being read. I will have to look into the Master Margarita. I have heard of it, but knew almost nothing about it, until now. Good analysis and I hope you are having success with your 100 books. It is certainly a plan from which I could also benefit. Thanks for posting.
I completely agree with you about Heinlein. As a kid, before I knew any better, I read dozens of Heinlein books, And I had a pretty good opinion of him. As an adult I tried to reread some of them. The misogyny is just foul. Kind of like HP Lovecraft’s racism. No amount of good writing can mask a very disturbing undertone of these works. Having said that, I think that “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress“ is a masterpiece.
Asimov was a Biochemist at Boston Univ, IIRC. He was a prolific writer of science books as well as sci fi. He edited many anthologies and his intros were great. HEehad a great sense of humor. I remember him describing when he was at an awards show and he had to present an award for best trilogy of all time and he was pissed because Foundation was up for the award so he assumed he was not getting it and thought it was mean to make him present the awsard and then he won and was shocked. I remember reading about this in one of his prologues and it was one of the fumiest things I have ever read.
Thanks for the thoughtful reviews. I feel like you can be a trusted guide based on your reviews of the books I've read. Heinlein feels like he never actually got past writing pulp for teenagers, although I admit a fondness for Stranger and Time Enough for Love, possibly for that reason. Reading Foundation novels in parallel with the Lije Bailey novels is a fun contrast. Subbed, good luck with the 100 books vids
I rarely see master and margarita on TH-cam videos. You're right. Strange but really indescribable. One of those you just have to read and it was well worth it.
Robert A Heinlein: Time Enough for Love, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land, Number of the Beast, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Misogynistic? I think he was having you on in that book. Take it with a grain of salt and move on. His other books are more challenging but in very different ways. Read the science in the fiction. It is stunning. If you really want a challenge, read Job. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Time Enough for Love are by far my favourites. Asimov is also a difficult read because he is somewhat wordy and contemplative. Read the Elijah Bailey series (3 books) or Robots and Empire. As to H. G. Wells, there is only one book above all others, The Time Machine. Have you read Candide by Voltaire? One book that disturbs me is A Clockwork Orange. And Orwell's 1984 is the stuff of nightmares.
Great video as usual. Loved Master and Margarita as well, just brilliant. So weird and so Russian and so good. It's so hard to talk about, I have the same problem. I just have to say, read it!
Heinlein all the way. Asminov is a weird transhumanist whose idea of a utopia is Brave New World levels of distopia. Asminov sacrifices humanity for his vision.
It's so strange to think of Majstor and Margarita as a fantasy book since I immediately think of lotr type things but it's one of my favorite books I've ever read
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What is amazing to me about Foundation is that Asimov's science of 'psychohistory' is essentially 'big data' analytics - the idea the with a large enough dataset, you can predict trends and outcomes with amazing accuracy, but cannot predict individual actions at all. This has, in the 70 years since he wrote the books, become the basis for business strategy. The fact that Asimov wrote the essence of this in the 1950s is mind-boggling.
I can't like this enough. Great comment. Sad I cannot give it more than one thumbs up...
I was down to teach data analysis at the beginning of this year. In the end it didn't happen, alas, but I was going to mention Foundation in the first lesson.
Guys, statistics long predates Asimov. "Big data analytics" is just good marketing. If anything, the overall quality of prediction has massively decreased as the volume of data analyzed has increased.
@@santiagopm88 BDA differs quite substantially from user driven statistics, even if BDA itself is a form of statistical analysis.
@@chrisanderson7820 bda is a marketing term with no concrete meaning. Machine learning is new and powerful, but nothing Asimov wrote had anything to do with that. The PREDICTIVE power of any analysis, be it applied to small or big data, is powered by Bayesian or Frequentist statistics, both of which predate and inspired Asimov.
Haven't you ever wondered at the fact that we are just as terrible now at predicting the future as we were 40 years ago? More data does not equal more predictive power
'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' & 'Stranger In a Strange Land' are head and shoulders above all the other Heinlein I've read.
I agree. My love for Heinlein is equally complicated by his great writing vs his politics and misogyny. But Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Herbert's Dune are the only books I re-read almost every year. Moon is a Harsh Mistress makes me cry every single time when I get to the ending. There are many better written books but I have to give kudos to any author that can evoke emotion, re-read after re-read.
@@BangkokQuizMaster What misogyny in him? He was writing about the evil that men do to women and that somehow makes HIM a misogynist? Sorry but you cannot judge a man just by his writing of fiction. Try reading about him. Learn what he said in real life too, plenty of his stuff is easy to find. Try Spider Robinson"s RAH, RAH, R.A.H. It might interest you.
@@BangkokQuizMaster A couple of the other ones I enjoy re-reading are The Forver War by Joe Haldeman and The Dragon in the Sea by Frank Herbert
The Cat Who Walked Through Walls has an impressive and well implemented premise. And I think the short story All You Zombies should be required reading for academic discussion.
But yeah, Moon and Stranger are definitely tops. And I grok Stranger as yet another cut above. Influences my thinking still, thirty years after.
@@daveingram9240 The Forever War was really gripping when I read it about 35 years ago. It is on my list of re-reads, hopefully some day.
Heinlein had several distinct phases. His juvenile phase, his mature phase and his weird phase. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Glory Road, Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough For Love are prime examples of his mature phase but you can see the start of his weird phase in some of them.
Stranger in a Strange Land definitely left me with a weird taste in my mouth. I got the impression that Heinlein was pretty eccentric and freaky.
I would classify Time Enough For Love as the beginning of his garbage period, but you can see disturbing elements even in Glory Road. Heinlein was a swinger in real life, so it may have just been his views coming into the open.
@@adamconnor1898I think the swinger thing is a myth….
I found your observation about Asimov's writing style interesting and helpful. It also helped me to crystalize why I'm drawn to it. Come to think of it, I am most frequently drawn to writing that is driven by ideas and dialogue, with a minimum of descriptive imagery; just enough to set the stage.
Me too, it is what I like to read, so it sets my goals as a writer too.
Asimov always said he could t write about romance or love scenes and murder was always committed “ off stage “ . His writing is always filled with dialogue between his People . I loved his writing it was simple but told of complex things .
@@cojaysea Like his excellent non fiction writing.
I really appreciate the various versions that show as you’re discussing a book.
"Orphans of the Sky" was originally two short stories published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1941 - "Universe" and "Common Sense". At that time, Katie Tarrant was John W. Campbell's first editor, whose primary goal was to purge all depictions of sex from any story printed in ASF. She didn't, however, get rid of domestic violence, which was barely a concept in 1941. Heinlein was writing for the market that was available to him, and the off-stage violence in OotS was unusual for him. Look at Heinlein's powerful female characters, long before other writers used them: "Mary", the skilled agent partnered with Sam Nivens in "The Puppet Masters"; Caroline Mshiyeni in "Tunnel in the Sky", "Peewee" in "Have Space Suit -- Will Travel", the protagonists in "Podkayne of Mars", "Friday", "I Will Fear No Evil", the numerous strong female characters sprinkled throughout his works. Nowhere is there a mousy, male-ruled housewife, and in a number of places women run things outright -- look carefully at Captain Hilda Corners in "The Number of the Beast/Pursuit of the Pankera", House Speaker Wyoming Knott-Davis from "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", and the Empress of the Twenty Universes from "Glory Road".
yet its funny how one punched out women scene for a joke can unravel that. its like that old farmer joke, "look at that wall i built, but do they call me mcgregor the wall builder? and look at the beautiful plantings and gardens here, but do they call me mcgregor the landscaper? but you eff one goat ..."
'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' was my favorite sci-fi book when I was a kid in high school. "Stranger in a Strange Land' was a close second. I also loved reading Asimov's Foundation books.
This is one of the most interesting reviews I have seen. The books were an eclectic mix, but all were very familiar to me. I really want to comment, though, on The Master and Margarita. I'm not quite sure how I came to buy it originally, but it is one of those books that has had a profound impact on my life. I first read it in college--which was more years ago than I want to admit--but I recently bought a new edition, and need to read it again. It is indeed a masterpiece and I would urge anyone to read it. Your synopsis of it was perfect without giving too much away.
New camera man!!! The picture is so much better (that speckle on the old one was killing me). Just fantastic!! So happy for you :-).
How did I just barely see this? 😭 Thank you for the kind words, of course! And I’m glad to see you’re still going strong on the challenge despite the temptation.
For the most part I've really enjoyed your lists and analysis of your favorite (and not so favorite) SF books. I'm 63 and have read literally thousands of SF books. I have to say I'm amazed that you have not read more Heinlein and especially look forward to your opinion of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" as it's probably my favorite SF book of all time.
Anyway, enjoy watching your videos even though our SF tastes are quite a bit different.
Yes mistress!!!!! These shipper snappers haven’t a clue.
On Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky, you are so spot on to point out the misogyny and violence against women. I come from the generation Heinlein was writing for, and still, it didn't always sit right with me. I applaud your commitment to giving honest review of subjects that you have no practical time-contextual experience with, that is a very difficult path and rife with peril but you bravely take it on. Much respect. His "Glory Road" is one you might tryout one day, It is in my estimation a truly great adventure story for someone who came from my generation and someone who is himself a patriarch. Cheers.
Glory Road was great, maybe a bit sexually advanced for a 10yo, but ended up lending some ideas I still carry as useful. Heinlein IRL was a swinger before it was cool, so, there is that if someone wants to judge him as a person.
I liked Glory Road when I was in Jr High, but for me, it really did not age well. Very tween wish fulfillment fantasy chosen one stuff that I’ve read/seen so much of it turns me off if not done exceptionally well these days. For someone who read a lot of Heinlein in Jr High, I have never heard of Orphans of the Sky, but I have read/seen other works based on the concept of a generation ship that the population has forgotten it is living in a ship. I don’t remember what the main one was kicking around my brain, but most recently it was used in an episode of the Orville.
@@MacAisling Could it have been the tv series Ascension?
I really appreciated Asimov's efforts to tie together his Elijah Bailey/R Daneel Olivaw universe with the Foundation universe. His expository style carried along with direct prose made him a wonderfully engaging writer. He was always came across as a humble man but clear about what he believed.
Well said. Exactly how I experience Azimov writing.
The Elijah Bailey and R.Daneel Olivaw relationship is incredibly fun to read. I really grew to like R. Giskard - I wish Elon Musk could develop 2 Robots with the same demeanor , humans need help.
It was in the 80’s (I believe) that he decided to put the Robot series and Foundation series together as being in the same universe. He admitted there were some incompatibilities, especially with his really early works, but he didn’t feel like going back to fix them. So he simply asked his readers to remember that combining the two was never his original intent.
@@AcmePotatoPackingPocatello Elon musk doesn't develop anything but Elon Musk - he hires smart people to do the work and works hard to take the credit.
Star Trek TNG borrowed Asimov’s positron if brain for Data, and some of the Foundation plot line, too. Asimov is influential beyond his lifetime.
@@b.t.walker2295and he said he read Heinleins first story and tried to copy him and never stopped copying him.
I am really happy to see you back here. I could listen to you talk about books for hours.
I agree with his (the commentator’s) point about Heinlein: he’s a very talented writer, but I struggled with his personality and values. 😩👍👍🏻👍🏽👍🏾👍🏿 And I remember these aspects from reading Heinlein decades ago, maybe four or five decades ago.
That is all from a complete falsehood about him. His writings got to be too much after 1970 or so due to severe illness and pain, and pain killers. And really a tragic life from the start. But none of it was literal. He wanted to show things and make you think, not accept. Big differences.
Good on you for being 'cautious' about the philosophy that Heinlein promoted. When I learned that he 'hung out' with L Ron Hubbard and participated in "questionable" activities, I began to look very closely at the world view he presented. Check out the book "Strange Angel" about the misfit JPL founding father Jack Parsons. Hubbard figures prominently in the tragedy of Parson's life. Heinlein was 'along with' Hubbard in dealing with Parsons and Thelema.
Stay safe!
Love your reviews; intelligent, thoughtful, personal. I realized that had at one ;point, read most of the ones reviewed here.
My favorite Heinlein is Tunnel in the Sky. I think its a deeply underappreciated work.
One of my favorite books I read in middle school. I have a copy now and reread it every now and then.
Ditto the Puppet Masters.
I really enjoy your Content, thanks for sharing.
Look forward of seeing more of your Videos. Fantastic!
Sleep is important (science says), please do take care, and thanks again... for all that reading!!!
A Stranger in a Strang Land is a fav. I loved all of the foundation novels. Asimov is so easy and fun to read that you don't want to stop.
You really nailed Asimov's appeal: complex and interesting ideas conveyed in direct, elegant prose. Much of his nonfiction is the same. It took Asimov's book on the bible to prod me into reading the Old Testament. Ton--Bungay is now on my TBR. Excellent video.
Good luck on your 100 book challenge! I should do the same the same thing...
I wish I would have kept my copy of Asimov's book on the bible.
Heinlein was of his time. Don’t judge these authors by today’s standards. The two books you mentioned but are missing are potentially his best.
This author was one of my gateways to Sci-fi. Very readable.
I hadn’t heard of Tono-Bungay. Again, your reviews are detailed and a pleasure to hear. Wow, that 100 book challenge is amazing. I might do that and document it.
The lighting really captured the Sci-Fireplace Vibe.
I really liked the whole vid. I've not gotten any real review/ feedback on Foundation since I was a teen & people were recommending it. Back when it wuz all we had. It's nice to think that they may be more readable than I remembered.
The Bulgakov hasn't grabbed me yet. I've got that complete translation, but don't know enough about Russian gov't & cultural in-jokes (It's part of the fiber, like Dante.) When I've tried in the past I felt like I was missing something. Glad you conquered it!
Good luck on your holy mission!
I hope you've got a little wiggle room built in for "Great Deals & Opportunities too Unique to Pass up!!"
The Inferno comparison is very appropriate. A lot of the satire doesn't port that well to 2022 unless you happen to have deep knowledge about the cultural milieu of the time, which I don't. It is worth reading to the end even though it can be tedious.
In 7th grade I read Foundation Trilogy. That was 1965 a.d.
All the books associated with the characters from Bailey. the detective, and the robots Daneel and Giskard of the Robot series to the Foundation Trilogy. And beyond.
Clearly written. Cleverly plotted. Thoroughly enjoyable characters that you care about.
Something Iain Banks couldn't quite do.
Nor Philip K.Dick.
Nor Heinlien
Nor Clarke
Frank Herbert did it with DUNE only of that series.
But Frank Herbert's protagonist in Whipping Star, Dosadi Experiment was great. Loved him.
Azimov tho was a master of likeable characters.
Herbert acknowledged that Dune took place in Asimov's galactic empire.
@@jacklewis5452
If you liked robot series.
You gotta read
Velocity Weapon
By Megan o'Keefe
Judging Heinlein or any author by today's standards when they are from a totally different era will skew your opinion. Even in some of Heinlein's later work where he is clearly placing women in positions of authority and as leaders he sometimes writes women more from a early 20th century man's point of view.
Heinlein or Asimov? Not even a question. For characterization Heinlein is always a better read than the characters of Isaac's work.
I respectfully disagree.
Asimov was a poorer writer, I believe, but he had a vastly bigger imagination and contributed much more to social discourse. I believe he was far smarter than Arthur C Clarke, too, though Clarke would definitely think otherwise -- as would Heinlein. Those two had too much ego.
Asimov was all ideas. His characterizations of people were from dialogue, rather than action. His writing had only limited physicality. Mostly he wrote as if everyone related to being up in their head all the time. I do.
OH HELL NOO
@@willcool713don't think so Asimov boring and has very few ideas. Asimov is like comic books it's for kids
@@Duck_Dodgers Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke are considered the Grand Masters of Sci-Fi (though I would include Lem, as well). So if you think Asimov is for children, you're obviously missing quite a bit, conceptually. If you're referring to his early Robot series, then yeah, that is largely YA material. But he was the most prolific writer of the three and had dozens upon dozens of books, fiction and non-fiction, and was a scholarly researcher in his own right. I'll agree his fictional characterisations ran a bit flat, and his plots were more cerebrally dramatic than action filled. But he was by far the smartest of the three, and the least cynical, and his books leapt through logical theory pretty quickly. If you don't keep up with the actual science, you'll always lose the plot, because that's what most of his stories were about, theory and philosophy.
STAND YOUR GROUND. I grew up with Heinlein, and he'll kind of always have a special place in my heart because of that. But re-reading him as an adult is harrowing sometimes. If you think he's misogynistic now, I guarantee you A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND is most definitely not gonna change your mind. And I say that with a heavy heart. It was one of my favorites for years.
I met Heinlein very briefly at the World Science Fiction convention in 1976. I was part of a group that attended with Sally Rand, noted fan dancer of yore. She attended the convention because Sally had gone to school with Heinlein and his brother. Her younger half-brother and his wife (Hank and Martha) were noted midwestern SF fans. We became friends through each of us having a close friendship with SF author Mike Resnick who, with his wife, were also part of that group.
Much of Heinlein's early output was seemingly aimed at a teen audience, elsewhere someone described it as juvenile, though there may be adult moments. His move towards more thoughtful, even progressive, liberal literature began for me (in the order in which I read them!) with ''Glory Road'' (1963) and was at a peak with ''Stranger in a Strange Land'' (1961). If you haven't read ''Stranger... '', you cannot ''get'' Heinlein.
His best known work, because of the Hollywood movie, is ''Starship Troopers''. Both the book (1959) and the movie (1997) are deeply ironical and are often dismissed as fascist because of the failure to recognise this. And here's the nub: Heinlein tells a story about the human condition, but does not spoon-feed obvious morals to the reader. In ''Orphans of the Sky'', I'm fairly certain that Heinlein is testing the reader's inclination to go along with the portrayal of misogyny, rather than exemplifying it as a normative social construct; it is classic Heinlein.
While Heinlein's work is woven around progressive morals and can get quite raunchy, Asimov's is woven around hard science and potential social consequences. In terms of predicting 21st century hardware, nobody else from that era has come close. Arthur C Clarke made a couple of pretty amazing predictions, including a patent for geo-stationary satellite communications but Asimov's novels and particularly short stories are full of stuff that we now use on a daily basis.
From the end of the 1950s, Heinlein's novels were more literate and much more complex than Asimov's. The latter excited my awareness of science, while Heinlein manifested my liberal tendencies, contrary to most people's reading of him.
Asimov said he read Heinleins’ first story and tried to do that and never stopped.
Heinlein was contracted to write books for young readers, which I suspected since 1966, and it is referred to as his juvenile stuff.
"The door into summer" read it and be glad you did. Cats always know what's right.
I love the Master & Margherita, glad you enjoyed it. Which translation did you read? Some are based on an incomplete text first smuggled out of USSR, missing some good scenes. But even the incomplete versions are great (includes my favorite translation, Mirra Ginsburg).
Interesting. My copy was translated by Diana Burgin and Katherine O'connor
@@Bookpilled That was the first complete text translation in the US .
That's a highly praised translation of the complete text. I've read others, but plan to read that one at some point
Same here. Great book. Will check out other translation mentioned. Love this channel!
Great channel! I really enjoyed your recommendations - and already ordered a couple of them.
The later Heinlein books are all like one long novel, and his writing, never very psychologicially deep or stylistically dynamic, settled into a cliched formula. A wise, wealthy, near omnipotent, ancient patriarch pontificates; kinda meta, as the kids say nowadays, Heinlein living his dream novelistically. But he covered a lot of territory w/ consistently good quality in his earlier years. His juvenile novels were very satisfying to me as a kid, and really hooked me on reading. And with his engineering/practical turn of mind, a number of products/trends have come to be in real life: water beds, slidewalks (mainly in airports, but I think of him when I ride one), awareness of ecology, potential theocratic dictatorship in the US, loosening of sexual mores.
I'm 64 now, and I did most of my sci-fi reading while a teenager. I've read the "Foundation Trilogy". I remember having a REAL hard time getting into Asimov, but it was somewhat rewarding when I did. I guess. Heinlein was just a lot easier for me to read as a teen. I just read the more juvenile books, "Starship Trooper", "Door Into Summer" and one or two others.
@@cag19549 I'm also amazed at the indignity of a lot of our youth of how horrible it was to use the atom bomb to end World War II. People in my father's home town, would read about people they knew, once or twice a week dying in the Pacific. They have no idea of what living throuth the tragedy of a war is all about. I went over to Japan in 2013 and, probably I shouldn't, but I let it be known that I do not, and never will apology for using the bomb.
@@cag19549 Bookpilled clearly, and quite transparently and honestly identifies himself a left-wing. Fair enough. But I tried to message him quite privately about his view and was confronted with an overly emotional response. So, I don't think he's interested in a rational analysis of anything, including something as mundane as science fiction. Also, I have to say, that the books he points out as, in his opinion, the top of the league of science fiction, while I admit that they have excellent prose, are just not all the interesting of a read, "Roadside Park", "Solaris", "Frankenstein", and more.
Great reviews. I have read all of Heinlein"s library except about 6 titles my favorite is "door into summer" BTW it would take me probably 3 years to read 100 books. It will be so cool to follow you on this journey.
DUDE!! I’m also NOT a Heinlein fan, but you gotta read “Stranger…” and the backstory of Heinlein’s attitude about it! Seriously! It practically (and thoroughly, ironically) chronicled the heart and soul that drove the 60’s!! That book was transformative to myself, and certain of my closest friends.
I have a copy of the original (longer) version!
When I read Asimov's foundation trilogy as a teen, I was familiar with Gibbon's The Rise & Fall of the Roman Empire, and remember Asimov's ideas as vividly as any physical description.
Asimov's basic idea that humans as individuals cannot be predicted, but humans in large enough numbers can be -- reflective of Shakespeare's famous line "There is a tide in the affairs of men" combined with fascination with Roman history which effected much 50's sci fi, such as Lest Darkness Fall, sets the cultural environment that made Asimov's Foundation instantly popular.
Wow, I read the Bulgakov about 30(?) years ago and now I've got to read it again. Your description of it reminds me a GREAT deal of The Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin. There's a big fat NYRB edition of that one out there and it is well worth the time and effort. And good luck!
I've read Sorokin and you have a point, but I think there's that Russian Fabulist tradition thing in lots of other former Soviet/Eastern Bloc writing, SF or otherwise - both Lem and the Strugatskys display this at times too.
Whoah. Asimov is one of my all time favourite authors. Including his short stories. His characters are mostly likeable and his humour often comes through
When I was 11, i read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (then only a true trilogy) followed immediately by Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Those two books together sent me down a rabbit hole, specifically in regards to religion, for the next decade or so. Neither are peak science fiction writing, but they formed such a large part of my worldview it's hard not to love them. Stranger is among my top 5 books.
I feel like adding to your Master & Margarita description... For me reading it was SO much FUN! There's this flourishing imagination let loose that I'm bummed you didn't mention. It felt so... free, perhaps from Bulgakov's knowing that it might never be published (although that may be his style, I don't know, it's the only one I read by him so far). One of my favourites ever, honestly blew me away
This one as written as two novellas in 1941. Now , Heinlein was quite good with short stories in the 1940s on the pages of Astounding Science Fiction. His best novels were in the 1950s, Double Star and Door into Summer are his best. His young adult novels , excluding Rocket Ship Galileo, are very good , better than any other young adult SF being written , at the time. His last really good SF novel was Star Ship Troopers , even with odd social setting. Stranger in a Strange Land is awful , tho got a popular following , for some reasons. Moon is a Harsh Mistress is kind of OK but he is starting with intrusive Soap Boxing which is awful, forget anything after Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Misogyny , curious, in that story, but I don't recall it being common in Heinlein , maybe a few others tho don't recall one, his star ship captains in Star Ship Troopers where all women, tho unlike The Forever War where they were side by side troopers with the men.
Try "Door into Summer," by Heinlein. That was always my favorit Heinlein book. Dana
Great video! I hope you still make some book haul videos for the ones you are buying to sell. Those are great!
Last month, having seen these on your channel, I read Inside Outside by Philip Jose Farmer and (I think I saw this on your channel) A Werewolf Among Us by Dean Koontz. Both have phenomenal covers and are very good books too. Thanks
Brings back a memory. Back about 60 years ago when I was in high school I had paperback "Inside Outside", which is all I remember.
@@peterpuleo2904 Yes, Farmer is awesome. If you haven't read the Riverworld series, please, get some time and do it. I loved it and changed my viewpoints of the world in high school.
Yes, Elna, read Riverworld by Farmer. It really gives an unique perspective on many topics, and it changed (or started to change) my understanding & view of religion, greatly.
Bulgakov is an absolute master. Sorokin is also brilliant, he's a descendent/disciple of Bulgakov and Gogol.
I'd agree with several other commentators here, in saying that 'Stranger in a Strange Land' is just not a great book. If you want to read it for 'completeness', fine - otherwise, I wouldn't bother. However, 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' is (imo, of course) is an excellent 'yarn' - and easily, Heinlein's best work. If one was to read only this one Heinlein novel, it would be time well spent. (I'm writing this as child of the '60s, who read absolutely everything RH wrote, as a child. I loved his stuff, then - as an adult, my perspective on his work has changed...)
Having grown up with Heinlein and more recently working my way through multiple juveniles and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress you are missing something. His writing shows always the greatest respect for women and believes they should be put on a pedestal. Any man that treats a woman poorly or is disrespectful is not a man at all. The women in his novels are generally independent, smart intelligent and certainly not laughed at. It has been a long time since I read this particular book but now I need to go read it to see if you are correct. Chance are he was making a point on how low these men were to treat women so poorly.
Chanced into your channel and I am impressed, and subscribed. I love hearing someone talking about books, especially science fiction, and enjoy listening while working at my desk (Work work, or hobby work). Brian Aldiss did a MUCH better send-up of the concept behind Orphans of the Sky, titled "Starship" or "Non-Stop" in the UK in 1958. Heinlein published Orphans in 1963. Read the original, please. At least, I think it is the first book on the topic. Aldiss was an amazing and thoughtful author.
Do try Door into Summer & Double Star. You might feel better about Heinlein. Of course, he did get so pedantic after Stranger in a Strange Land. I didn't care for SiaSL either, I do have to admit. I am not sure he is as much a misogynist as you have concluded. Anyway, think about DiS & DS. Yours, Dana
I used to be a pretty big Heinlein fan, and reread many of the books every few/five years. But it's been a while and so a recent revisit was after a longer time than usual. Based on that recent revisit, I'd say don't bother with Stranger, but can still recommend Harsh. But his long-winded personal/political monologues are present in all the post-juvenile / later works and tend to weigh all those books down to a considerable extent, even if one is sympathetic to some of the underlying notions. Harsh has a good premise, decent plot and characters, and isn't overwhelmed by the monologues, though some are still present. The fairly direct, much later sequel to Harsh (The Cat Who Walks Through Walls) does not hold up as well, btw. I would, however, say that 70 years on, Heinlein seems to be proving to be a better futurist than Clarke or Asimov.
But not as good as Huxley.
@@elowishusmirkatroid4898 ... or Ayn Rand
I don't know anything about this channel, but "sci-fireplace" is a good enough reason to sub.
Edit: But then you ruined it by complaining about "misogyny".
Asmiov is often considered the best Sci-fi writer of all time (or at least one of the top 3-4) and Heilein has 1-2 landmark books that shaped millions of people's lives.
Sci-fi book reviewer: "I've only read one short story by Asimiv", "Have not read Stranger in a Starnge Land"
Advice: stop whatever you are doing and read every book by both authors. Until then, your credibility is in question. I know this may sound harsh, but you'd never visit a doctor that hadn't treated a common cold before. However, do keep up the reviews and I'll keep watching. Thank you.
If you haven't read it, you may want to give The Gods Themselves by Asimov a chance. It's my favorite of his. The concept behind the book is brilliant and it contains one of the best depictions of a truly alien culture/universe.
Try Glory Road- also by Heinlein - maybe its not strictly Science Fiction but it cerainly sparked a new and different genre
The audio edition is hilarious
Sorry you didn’t get the “wink” that Heinlein put in Orphans in the Sky. He has done this in other books, although maybe not to this extent. It’s his way of poking the reader to really think about what was written, that “heroes” may not be perfect, but are shaped by their environment and culture. As you said, this story doesn’t belong in the juvenile series. Yes, Heinlein fans are very protective of him, partly because he was so far ahead of his time, sometimes shockingly so. If you grew up in the ‘50’s as I did and started with his juveniles then moved on to his adult stories, you would probably have a different perspective and appreciation of his vision, his Future Histories. I would recommend Starship Troopers (a lot different than the movie), Time Enough For Love (sequel to Methuselah’s Children), Number of the Beast (Lots of winks), The Door Into Summer (He does show some demons left from his first marriage), Farnham’s Freehold (ditto…difficult to appreciate), and last but not least- Job: A Comedy of Justice ( Wow!). No offense, but if you haven’t even read Stranger in a Strange Land or Moon is a Harsh Mistress, you really don’t know Heinlein. Hopefully, after reading more of him, you will see why Heinleiners are the way they are. For short stories, I would highly recommend “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag”, and “All You Zombies-“ Lastly, for sheer fun, “Magic, Inc.” Happy reading.
Number of the Beast is actually a clear indication that Heinlein is an aggressive misandrist.
@@etsequentia6765 Really? Well, I think you are half right in that he aggressively promotes ideas, but it would help if you provided examples of the other. Lazarus Long, Dr. Jacob Burroughs and Zeb Carter don’t fit in that category, IMO.
For me, this video is a bit of an education on how we all see something differently. I read to see where the author is going to take me and what new things I'm going to see along the way. I most likely pick up on underlying themes along the way, but they are not my main focus.
Great video! I was super exited about Asimov's trilogy but I had to drop it. im an architect and the lack of description and interaction was so much that I couldn't keep reading it.
I was a Russian major, and read the Master and Margarita for a lit class (thank God we read this one in English! Would not have had the strength to look up vocabulary and follow the story). Loved it and have been meaning to re-read it this many years later.
Good luck with the challenge. Question: what if your app tells you to read the second book in a series you haven't read? Not sure my nature would allow me to do that 😆
I leave later books in series out of the list on the app
Heart of a dog by Bulgakow is really good too. Its just 150 pages and very different to Master i Margarita but i really enjoyed it too so u might wanna give it a chance.
Libertarians like myself really dig Heinlein's work
"Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors - and miss"
Asimov wrote that the entire foundation series includes all of the following books ... Asimov - foundation series
These books are all woven together so you are missing much of the story which requires all of them to follow.
1.) The Complete Robot
👍🏻?? Robot Dreams-
👍🏻2.) the Caves of Steel-
👍🏻3.) the Naked Sun
👍🏻4.) the Robots of Dawn
5.) Robots & Empire
👍🏻6.) the Currents of Space
👍🏻7.) the Stars Like Dust
👍🏻8.) pebble in the sky
👍🏻9.) prelude to foundation
👍🏻10.) foundation
👍🏻11.) foundation & empire
👍🏻?? Forward the Foundation
👍🏻12.) second foundation
👍🏻13.) foundations edge
👍🏻14.) foundation & earth
Dang, the 100 book challenge sounds wild. I should do something like that, but I might have to start with just 10 haha
Also, for what it's worth, try to read the original version of Stranger In A Strange Land... the expanded version is (ALSO MY OPINION) unnecessary. Starship Troopers is actually one of my favorites (of Heinlein) mainly because the pacing is tighter and there's only one chapter of Heinlein egregiously lecturing the audience.
Matt, my friend, I am rather sad you didn't appreciate Orphans in the Sky, since I did. I saw the ridiculousness of sexism in that book (including the end) as more of a satire and statement about how humanity still hasn't learned or recovered from it's immaturity. But I could be adding that in my head to get over the ridiculousness of it. Will have to re-read it at some point.
Also I hope, very surreptitiously, the books convert you into a "book reader" and not just a "book buyer" and you go on to continue past these 100.
Thanks for your videos as always
I don't find Heinlein always enjoyable, but I will be forever grateful for a concept elucidated by one of his characters (a stand-in for himself): a nuclear power plant is no less natural than a beaver dam.
LOL 🤣! A minute in and I was thinking, "the only book of his that I'd really recommend is Stranger in a Strange Land", then, "Maybe The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".
Heinlein (the Puppet Masters) was the first book I ever read that I picked out myself, and as an 8 year old it fascinated me, but yes he's not that good when compared to his contemporaries. I read everything he wrote until he lost his mind, but by the time I was about 12 I recognized that he was writing specifically for teenage boys.
Just for reference because the movie is so popular, Starship Troopers is worth a read, if only to understand how little the movie used.
Thanks so much for the Wells recommendation!
I am modifying my comment on Heinlein and I'm going to cut him some slack in light of the era he was from. Am re-reading "The Roads Must Roll", and found, yes he was chauvinistic - like a lot of sci-fi writers from then, but he presciently created a character much like Donald J. Trump. This was the renegade engineer who took over by installing cronies and like minded everywhere he could. The only flaw to this story was Heinlein underestimated how easy it would be to restore order. So read Heinlein, but with the times and his personality in mind. I was too hard on him.
Really enjoyed this video. Asimov is my favorite writer and while I agree with you that he is prone to dialogue and ideas vs. imagery, not everyone remembers imagery quite the same way. I always took ideas from Asimov, and I think that might be why I preferred him over Heinlein and Herbert, etc. Thanks for the video. Made me want to sit down in an arm chair, drink coffee, and discuss psychohistory with you.
Nice lighting
Thanks man
Enjoyed the video, interesting to hear your thoughts on Second Foundation, I didn't pick up on your opinion that this was much the weaker in the trilogy. I was probably very young at the time, I was about 10 when I started reading SF. I always loved Asimov's dialogue style enabling me to visualise my own world for his characters to fit in. To this day (almost 50 years on) I struggle with heavy narrative exposition. You are right to read 100 books before acquiring many more, I did what you are doing from about age 20 to age 50 and now I wont read more than 10-15% of the SF books I own before I die.
I empathize with your conundrum about buying books that remain unread. I probably have about 100 books, fiction and nonfiction, sitting lonely and neglected on my shelves, and yet I must fight the temptation to buy more. Bibliophiles have that in common, even if all they collect are cheap, raggedy paperbacks.
We should all remember that Heinlein and Asimov were the products of their times. Also remember that Asimov was the more educated. Asimov and Heinlein were the two authors I began reading pretty close to the first. I just finished wading through "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress". I did like the way he wrote like russian-not-speaking-english-well. The computer stuff was, as far as I could tell, pretty advanced for that time. But, to me it was a slow read. I have also read a lot of Asimov and consider the Foundation books to be timeless. My first Heinlein was Have Spacesuit Will Travel which was serialized in Boys Life magazine. Heinlein was also ex-military and he wrote a lot of his books with the same no-nonsense Manner. I found his treatment of women to be small-minded. The final difference between them is the fact that Heinlein began writing to make a living since he'd had a heart attack and the docs told him to not do anything too heavy. Not what they say these days! Asimov began writing as a teen because he loved it so much.
Asimov said himself that he read Heinleins first story and tried to copy him and never stopped trying to copy him.
No it was his characters treatment, not his. He heaped great compliments on his wife, always!
TH-cam recommended your channel to me and I just wanted to drop you a note and let you know how much I am enjoying your reviews and your approach to them. I also couldn't get through any E.E.Doc Smith I have tried, so I know we are simpatico.
If you are not familiar with Barrington Bayley, I reccomend Fall of Chronopolis and Collision Course, two books with fascinating approaches to time travel. The female characters are badly drawn, but not as bad, I think, as the Heinlein book you review here.
Best.
People have always told me about foundation. It sounded a bit too theory/dialogue heavy but I saw the apple tv show. Hear mixed reviews from fans of the books. But the performance from Lee pace as brother day was so spectacular and not a traditional villain. Very methodical in how they manipulate their empire and each other. I had to jump on the series and went out and purchased that whole series and currently reading them. I stopped reading the three body problem series (another recommended series by a youtuber) just so I can get this series through the end
The two Heinlein books you haven't read are the only ones I have!
"If you go through the alluvial layers of comments..." _Brilliant!_
I started reading Heinlein in 1960. I was 11, and the juvenile sci-fi he wrote was easy reading. You have to remember, Orphans in the Sky was a reworking of two stories he'd written more than 20 years earlier. I recommend Glory Road, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, and Farnham's Freehold, as better examples.
There are several better examples of early efforts at the genre., Murray Leinster, Alfred Bester, L Sprague de Camp, etc. Foundation was also an early entry in the Sci-Fi sweeps, appearing in 1951, when ideas about space, space travel, and interstellar realities were still developing. The sequels, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation, followed in the next couple years. The 4th book wouldn't arrive until 1983, 32 years after the first. Everybody seems to agree, the first two books are better.
There are some giants that don't get much talk, why not feature those. I've read somewhere between 10K and 12,500 books, never heard of Bulgakov. He died almost a decade before i was born, so no surprise. However, The Master and Margarita plays more as a morality tale, than anything Sci-Fi, or Fantasy. It is typical of a lot of reflective literature common to the times of his life.
Here is a list I recommend to readers of Science Fiction:
The Best in Science Fiction
01 P H I L I P K D I C K
Eye in the Sky
The Man in the High Castle
The Game-Players of Titan
Now Wait for Last Year
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
The Unteleported Man
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
Ubik
A Scanner Darkly
02 R O B E R T A H E I N L E I N
The Puppet Masters
The Rolling Stones
Tunnel in the Sky
Starship Troopers
Stranger in a Strange Land
Glory Road
Farnham's Freehold
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
03 A R T H U R C C L A R K E
Islands in the Sky
Childhood's End
The Nine Billion Names of God
2001: A Space Odyssey (series)
Rendezvous with Rama
Imperial Earth
The Songs of Distant Earth
The Hammer of God
04 F R E D E R I K P O H L
The Space Merchants
The Age of the Pussyfoot
Gateway (series)
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon
Heechee Rendezvous
The Other End of Time
The Boy Who Would Live Forever
05 R O G E R Z E L A Z N Y
Lord of Light
Nine Princes in Amber (series)
Jack of Shadows
Today We Choose Faces
Doorways in the Sand
Deus Irae (with Philip K Dick)
06 K U R T V O N N E G U T
Player Piano
The Sirens of Titan
Cat's Cradle
Welcome to the Monkey House
Slaughterhouse-Five
Breakfast of Champions
07 R A Y B R A D B U R Y
The Martian Chronicles
The Illustrated Man
Fahrenheit 451
A Medicine for Melancholy
Something Wicked this Way Comes
08 L A R R Y N I V E N
Ringworld (series)
A Gift from Earth
The Patchwork Girl
Flatlander
09 U R S U L A K L E G U I N
The Wizard of Earthsea (series)
The Left Hand of Darkness
The Lathe of Heaven
10 I S A A C A S I M O V
Pebble in the Sky
Foundation (series)
The Gods Themselves
+ 10 Honorable Mentions:
JRR Tolkien The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings
The Silmarillion
Harry Harrison The Stainless Steel Rat (series)
Make Room! Make Room! (basis for Soylent Green)
West of Eden (series)
Jerry Pournelle The Mote In God's Eye
w/ Larry Niven Lucifer's Hammer
Oath of Fealty
Go Tell the Spartans
Philip Jose Famer Riverworld (series)
A Barnstormer in Oz
Dayworld (series)
Terry Pratchett Discworld (series)
Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman)
William Gibson Necromancer (series)
All Tomorrow's Parties
Poul Anderson The Psychotechnic League (series)
Tomorrow's Children (series)
Frank Herbert Dune (series)
Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (series)
James SA Corey Leviathan Wakes (series)
Piers Anthony Macroscope
L Frank Baum the Oz books (series, including Ruth Plumly Thompson)
Grandfathers of the Genre:
M A R Y S H E L L E Y
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818)
The Last Man (1826)
J U L E S V E R N E
Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864)
From the Earth to the Moon (1865)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869)
The Mysterious Island (1874)
H G W E L L S
The Time Machine (1895)
The Island of Dr Moreau (1896)
The Invisible Man (1897)
War of the Worlds (1898)
The Sleeper Awakes (1910)
K A R E L C A P E K
R. U. R. (1920)
A L F R E D B E S T E R
The Demolished Man (1953)
The Stars My Destination (1956)
M U R R A Y L E I N S T E R
Proxima Centauri (1935)
Conquest of the Stars (1952)
S T A N I S L A W L E M
The Man from Mars (1946)
The Magellanic Cloud (1955)
The Star Diaries (series) (1957)
L S P R A G U E D E C A M P & F L E T C H E R P R A T T
The Incomplete Enchanter (1941)
The Carnellian Cube (1948)
The Castle of Iron (1950)
Wall of Serpents (1960)
I am glad I found your channel. You will be big one day.
Just want to add a comment on your Heinlein selection, Orphans in the Sky. I read this. I read this in junior high in the 70's. I vaguely remember this now that you mentioned. A lot what you mention must have flown over my head at the time. The only thing I remember about it now was some ignorant character throwing books into an energy converter. I also remember thinking how "different" this was to find in my school's library. As a young teen, I thought it was kinda cool. I don't think I was influenced too badly by it.
Heinlein at his best would be Time Enough for Love, Number of the Beast, or Job: A Comedy of Justice.
HG Wells has always been of my very favourite science fiction writers.
Love Robert Heinlein! Love the Lazarus Long books. Do you not like his pushing individual initiative and responsibility? He was my first sci fi and still my fave.
Nothing we take for granted in a modern society comes from individual initiative or personal responsibility.
Try building yourself a car or a computer from unprocessed ores and rare earths and you'll see how much you depend on the hugely complex systems of interdependency and social responsibility that allow us in the West to live in the comfort we do.
Individual initiative or personal responsibility are notions used by the top 10% to trick the rest of us into accepting our meagre share of the wealth we create with our work, as a function of their lack of "pep" and not pulling their socks up high enough.
Heinlein was just a standard rich, white, "conservative", Neo-fascist, otherwise known in the states as a "Republican" 😅
Your reviews gave me something tp think about; thanks. Without thinking much, I would have instantly answered your query........Heinlein, obviously. IMO, he was a much better writer than Asimov, but I was young when I read them. Foundation seemed OK, but contrived and impersonal. There were no characters to connect with. Heinlein projects a very strong character, he loved cats, he was quite libertarian, and he was not afraid of being controversial. He seemed romantic to me, but I was a young male back then in the 60's. I'd second your impulse to read the two other Heileins you mentioned, although I only read them once. The Puppet Masters impressed me as a youngster, too, and the service aspect of Starship Troopers was interesting. As an update of it (The Forever War by Joe H.), I think Joe produced the more impressive work.
I'm glad you mentioned Wells and his social novels. I'd also recommend Kipps, and a couple of his socialist/utopian novels, like In the Days of the Comet, and Men Like Gods. Wells had an amazing mind and is a very underrated novelist.
I never really considered the misogynistic aspects of Heinlein, but now that you mention them, I have to say I suspect you are correct. He may not have been a very nice guy, although he certainly was talented.
I've never even heard of your Russian guy. I'll have to give it a shot. I'll also be curious to hear what you have to say about the rest of the Dune series. The one where the son of Dune turns into a worm lost it for me....I DNF'd the rest of it. The first couple I enjoyed.
I used to really love Heinlein. Then I read (I think it was) The Cat Who Walks through Walls. The protagonist is an author who states (paraphrased) that he doesn't need to be original. He just files off the serial numbers and produces the same book and the masses are happy to pay him the big bucks. I thought about the past few Heinlein novels I'd read and thought, "Yep. I can see that."
Stranger in a Strange Land is a bit different, as I already see mentioned in other comments. Overall, however, I am in agreement with your assessment of Heinlein overall. He has always struck me as a person it would be unpleasant to know and hang with.
H G Wells. I like that you mention he is a timeless writer. I feel his stories are at home in any age, and he is a much better writer than he seems to get credit for being.
I also agree, mostly, with your assessment of the Asimov initial Foundation trilogy. It is a very smooth read, even with all the detailed looks at the Seldon plan. As to the tenor of the books. I seem to remember feeling that the novels greatly reflected the persona of the narrator. Certainly the big picture of Hari Seldon's science, mostly, didn't make examination on an individual basis all that necessary, except where certain fixed points in history were predicted to occur. That could be wrong, since I also agree that it is a difficult set of tales to exactly recall, even though they might be engaging while being read.
I will have to look into the Master Margarita. I have heard of it, but knew almost nothing about it, until now.
Good analysis and I hope you are having success with your 100 books. It is certainly a plan from which I could also benefit.
Thanks for posting.
I completely agree with you about Heinlein. As a kid, before I knew any better, I read dozens of Heinlein books, And I had a pretty good opinion of him. As an adult I tried to reread some of them. The misogyny is just foul. Kind of like HP Lovecraft’s racism. No amount of good writing can mask a very disturbing undertone of these works. Having said that, I think that “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress“ is a masterpiece.
Of course, you'd love the socialist Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
@@georgegonzalez-rivas3787 More libertarian than socialist.
@@emsleywyatt3400 to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to
"Farnham's Freehold" has Heinlein telling us about cannibalistic Black rulers in the future. Yikes.
@@georgegonzalez-rivas3787
....trite- response for absolutely no reason..
Read Jack London book IRON HEEL.
Asimov was a Biochemist at Boston Univ, IIRC. He was a prolific writer of science books as well as sci fi. He edited many anthologies and his intros were great. HEehad a great sense of humor. I remember him describing when he was at an awards show and he had to present an award for best trilogy of all time and he was pissed because Foundation was up for the award so he assumed he was not getting it and thought it was mean to make him present the awsard and then he won and was shocked. I remember reading about this in one of his prologues and it was one of the fumiest things I have ever read.
Heinlein is so self-indulgent. Even his better books. His later ones are even more obviously an exercise in juvenile onanism.
Stranger in a Strange Land is my favorite Heinlein work.
Thanks for the thoughtful reviews. I feel like you can be a trusted guide based on your reviews of the books I've read. Heinlein feels like he never actually got past writing pulp for teenagers, although I admit a fondness for Stranger and Time Enough for Love, possibly for that reason. Reading Foundation novels in parallel with the Lije Bailey novels is a fun contrast. Subbed, good luck with the 100 books vids
I rarely see master and margarita on TH-cam videos. You're right. Strange but really indescribable. One of those you just have to read and it was well worth it.
Robert A Heinlein: Time Enough for Love, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land, Number of the Beast, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Misogynistic? I think he was having you on in that book. Take it with a grain of salt and move on. His other books are more challenging but in very different ways. Read the science in the fiction. It is stunning. If you really want a challenge, read Job. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Time Enough for Love are by far my favourites.
Asimov is also a difficult read because he is somewhat wordy and contemplative. Read the Elijah Bailey series (3 books) or Robots and Empire.
As to H. G. Wells, there is only one book above all others, The Time Machine.
Have you read Candide by Voltaire?
One book that disturbs me is A Clockwork Orange. And Orwell's 1984 is the stuff of nightmares.
Great new look. Have you brought a new camera.
Yes, new camera and new mic.
Great video as usual. Loved Master and Margarita as well, just brilliant. So weird and so Russian and so good. It's so hard to talk about, I have the same problem. I just have to say, read it!
Heinlein all the way. Asminov is a weird transhumanist whose idea of a utopia is Brave New World levels of distopia. Asminov sacrifices humanity for his vision.
It's so strange to think of Majstor and Margarita as a fantasy book since I immediately think of lotr type things but it's one of my favorite books I've ever read
So happy to see you!