My love affair with mister Asimov’s writing began early on. I think he was one of the very first writers that I completely fell in love with and the one who made me a sci-fi addict I am today. I loved his straight-forward style, his complex questions that were effortlessly stated, his humour. I loved that I loved his characters.
He made my 18 year old brain think of things I had never thought before. Like what makes me, me? What makes me human? What is consciousness? Is some evil necessary? How should we treat others and the objects that surround us? And my admiration only grew when I found out that he was one of the most prolific writers to have ever lived and that he wrote pretty much on every subject, but philosophy (even though if you have read any of his sci-fi works, you would know that is not entirely accurate).
But I think one of the things that I most admire about mister Asimov is his idealism. He never stopped believing that people can be good and can make the right choices. And I, too, hope to be able to maintain that optimism in humanity, throughout my life. I hope to do things that inspire people to be better, just as he did, and to think more, just as he did. I hope to keep being a good human being. Yesterday was the day that marked 25 years since humanity lost one of its greatest, if you ask me. The day before that I did something significant for me as a person and to honour, in my own small way, the work and life of mister Asimov. May he live forever in our collective consciousness. And now, a few quotes from my favourite work of his.
” – What more could you do if you were free?
– Perhaps no more than I do now, Your Honor, but with greater joy. It has been said in this courtroom that only a human being can be free. It seems to me that only someone who wishes for freedom can be free. I wish for freedom.
And it was that statement that cued the judge. The crucial sentence in his decision was ‘There is no right to deny freedom to any object with a mind advanced enough to grasp the concept and desire the state’.”
“Freedom is without price (…) Even the chance of freedom is worth the money”.
And this: “I don’t believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books”.
Thank you, mister Asimov, for everything.
No doubt at all that Asimov was an innovator. His Laws of Robotics underpin almost all AI behaviour in SF and real life. I always found him to be somewhat dry and lacking in human character. Compare his work to the likes of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, where you’ll find characters who may be from the Betelgeuse system, Gallifrey or may be trolls or werewolves, but they are always much more human, which deepens the profundity of anything they were trying to say.
I was always drawn to the writing of Asimov despite having read a lot of works from other authors in sci-fi.