How can you know which book is best until you read both?
I don't want to read scifi all the time. So when I do read a scifi book, I have tons of good ones to pick from.
I actually recently read Foundation by Asimov and I don't see what all the big deal is about. It presupposes faster than light travel but not the spread of ideas. Also his sexist attitudes are apparent. He basically states that the entire female population planet of the foundation planet isn't important.
That's probably the last Asimov work I will read in my lifetime, based purely on the quality of the work, and nothing to do with his character.
>How can you know which book is best until you read both?
There are reviews, excepts, literary fame, word of mouth, tv adaptations, and several other things to get an idea about that. How moral the author was during their time on earth is hardly on my list of such things.
>I don't want to read scifi all the time. So when I do read a scifi book, I have tons of good ones to pick from.
Sure, but that's neither here nor there as to the point we're discussing. We'd have the same issue with any other genre (or even any other art rather than literature).
>There are reviews, excepts, literary fame, word of mouth, tv adaptations, and several other things to get an idea about that. How moral the author was during their time on earth is hardly on my list of such things.
I don't have time to read all Sci fi books, nor do I have time to read all reviews. I have to make a decision on very limited information. That's why I said between two seemingly equal books, meaning equal reviews, prestige, whatever, if one author is a creep and the other isn't, I'll pick to read the book by the author who isn't a creep.
>Sure, but that's neither here nor there as to the point we're discussing. We'd have the same issue with any other genre (or even any other art rather than literature).
I'm not discussing the abstract concept of separating art from artist. I'm discussing how it applies to me. This topic has pretty extensive treatment in literary/critical theory.
The reason this is applicable to me is that I have a goal to consume all the best scifi, and I don't have enough time in my lifetime to consume all the best scifi. Therefore I can afford to be more picky. I personally choose to limit myself to the best of the best Sci fi that happens to not be written by creeps.
If someone told me the best scifi novel ever was written by Hitler, I would probably read it. But if someone told me Hitler wrote a pretty good scifi novel I would skip it until I read all the really good ones. And then maybe I'll switch to reading a really good book from another genre before reading a pretty good book by Hitler.
Also I find it much, much more important to apply this principle to authors who are still alive. I don't want to financially support authors who are creeps. If they are dead, then it just is really some completely arbitrary selection criteria that I choose to apply to limit the total number of works I could read from some super huge number I could never hope to consume in my lifetime to some slightly smaller super huge number I could never hope to consume in my lifetime.
I don't want to read scifi all the time. So when I do read a scifi book, I have tons of good ones to pick from.
I actually recently read Foundation by Asimov and I don't see what all the big deal is about. It presupposes faster than light travel but not the spread of ideas. Also his sexist attitudes are apparent. He basically states that the entire female population planet of the foundation planet isn't important.
That's probably the last Asimov work I will read in my lifetime, based purely on the quality of the work, and nothing to do with his character.