> Also I don't think anyone but an academic will be reading his work in a few hundred years. As much as I enjoy his ideas and his easy style he is actually mediocre.
I don't like to point out and say people's opinions are wrong but The Embire series are cornerstone of science fiction writing and will surely be read in the future. I can't imagine someone studying the history of scifi literature and skipping Asimov at any point in time.
You said it: studying. That's why I say an Academic might be reading it. Some work becomes the preserve of specialists and other work continues to be read by people who love reading. We still read Dickens. Some of that work is almost 200 years old.
Realistically, very few books keep being read for hundreds years and those who do typically strongly influenced politics or art or because they have contemporary ideological message (teaching kids values and political attitudes we want them to get).
Dickens is not read just because it was fun.
Asimov is more in the "for fun" category. They are creative, but you must avoid thinking deeper about those societies and people in them - it breaks those books.
So while it definitely plays role in sci-fi history, it is replaceable by next fun thing (Harry Potter or whatever).
>Realistically, very few books keep being read for hundreds years
Considering his first stories came around 1930 iirc, his books are already close to the "hundred years" mark, and still read, so we're past wondering about that...
People might not read Tom Wolf ('The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' anyone?) but they'll sure keep reading Asimov and Clarke and Dick and co for a good while...
I have no idea why you would propose Tom Wolfe as an avatar for quality. No-one really knows whose work will continue to connect with generations to come. Tom Wolfe is, in my view, mediocre and a writer whose middle-brow popularity is largely to do with his capturing something about the times he lived in.
Asimov, re-reading him as an adult, is also quite mediocre. He writes space melodramas garnished with some neat ideas. He knew how to popularize scientifically novel ideas. He was genuinely imaginative. But you can't take his sentimental and cliched scenarios seriously.
Philip K Dick on the other hand I think might well be read in 500 years. His work, with its own many defects, often has something profound in it.
>I have no idea why you would propose Tom Wolfe as an avatar for quality.
I have no idea why you think I've proposed him "as an avatar of quality". I gave him as an example of someone who was once widely celebrated, but not that read anymore (much less in a "100 years").
In fact, talk about literary quality didn't enter my comments in this subthread at all. It's about whether people will still read Asimov, or whether they would care about the facts in TFA so that his legacy as a sci-fi leader is in danger, etc.
>Asimov, re-reading him as an adult, is also quite mediocre. He writes space melodramas garnished with some neat ideas. He knew how to popularize scientifically novel ideas. He was genuinely imaginative. But you can't take his sentimental and cliched scenarios seriously.
Well, a lot of well known sci-fi is mediocre, if "garnished with some neat ideas". That doesn't change the fact that it's good and popular for what it is (genre fiction, not high literature with subtle writing and profound truths). Or whether it will be read in 100 or 500 years. And I think Asimov will (well, if people are still around, that is).
Ehhhh. I agree in general but there are so many exceptions to that. Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, et al are all regularly dissected but frankly just read for pleasure.
Note that most of the fairy tales get changed to accommodate whatever message is currently popular. For example, remember the atrocity that Disney did to the original "The little mermaid" fairy tale. The main characters remain for hundred of years, but the story not.
You can study things and not be called an academic. For instance if you enter a genre by force, you usually read some sort of chronology of best hits by the decades -- because there are many more books published to discover beyond this year.
I don't like to point out and say people's opinions are wrong but The Embire series are cornerstone of science fiction writing and will surely be read in the future. I can't imagine someone studying the history of scifi literature and skipping Asimov at any point in time.