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Life and Time | Rating | |
| F | |||
| Isaac Asimov | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| N/A | N/A | ||
Isaac Asimov wrote more than fiction. He was a scientist as well, and a very respected one. Life and Time is one of his many essay collections, concerning itself mostly with where life came from and where it might be going.
I remember reading this book years ago and loving it. I never much liked his fiction, but at the time I thought his essays were great. Imagine my surprise when I picked this up again and found myself unable to read completely through a single essay.
Perhaps it's the age these were written. After all, the collection was published in 1978, and some of the essays date from as far back as 1960. Some of that is just plain out of date. Or perhaps it's the subject matter. Asimov organized it in cronological order not of publication but of subject matter. As such, the first essays are regarding the origins and definition of life, how scientists sclassify it, and so on. But biology was never my favorite subject, and I found it insufferable.
Or perhaps it's just that I've come to dislike Asimov's style. It's very dry, very factual, and while I have no doubts it is all true and very interesting to someone of a more scholoarly bent, to me it was too dull to enjoy. This is fiction, so it shouldn't have to entertain, but it should at least hold my interest, and even when I skipped ahead to other essays I found it just didn't. After a few tries, I ended up putting this book down, disappointed in my own memories.
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