>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).
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...