![]() The first of the novel's three sections was given the unappealing label "laboratory thriller" in the Guardian's 1973 review of the book. Just how unusual the book is going to be doesn't emerge in the first 50 or so pages. If The Gods Themselves is anything to go by, he must have been waiting until he had something pretty unique to say. His long absence from the Hugo best-novel roster (he didn't win the award until The Gods Themselves came along in 1973, and he was well into his 50s) becomes more understandable when we remember that many of his 1950s novels were part of an ongoing series – and the surprising fact that, prolific as he may have been, he only wrote four novels between 19 (when he won it again). The author of I, Robot fully deserves his place alongside Arthur C Clarke and Robert Heinlein in the pantheon of the mid-20th century SF Golden Age. ![]() His ability to churn out such an astonishing amount of material could in part be ascribed to his claim never to read drafts of his work before filing them – but much as I'd like to provoke a firestorm by trying to claim that Asimov was a hack, I can't. As well as writing more than 500 books, he somehow managed to work full time as a biochemist at Boston University, produce numerous film scripts and treatments and, incidentally, coin the word "robotics" (though the Capek brothers might feel their thunder slightly embezzled by this). ![]()
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