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Today and Tomorrow and... | Rating | |
| C | |||
| Isaac Asimov | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| N/A | N/A | ||
Isaac Asimov wrote numerous articles on all sorts of subjects, everything from moon colonies to the duck-biller palatypus. And they were printed in a good many magazines, not all of them having anything obviously to do with either science or fiction. This is a collection of some of them.
I found this book way back, when I was in high school. Maybe even when I was in middle school, I'm not sure. At any rate, I though then that it was a wonderful book. It was full of interesting facts, new ways to look at things, a bit of optimism and a bit of worry about our future.
Today, reading it as an adult, I find it tedious. I know all this already. Granted, at least some of it I know because I read it here, so many years ago, but that merely changes the point, not obliviates it. However interesting and informative these essays may be - and some of them truly are - they don't bear repetition very well.
They do hav ethe benefit of being extremely easy to read and understand. Asimov had a positive gift for explaining step by step and point by point exactly what he wants to get across. There's a very wide variety of subject material that he espouses upon, too, so most readers will probably find at least a few articles that appeal. And, since they are in the form of short essays, it makes for an excellent book to pass the time. An article or two can easily be fit into a lunch break, a bus ride, or some unwinding time before bed.
In a lot of ways, then, this is a good read. But it has limited value as something to reread, or even go through the first time. The articles are interesting enough but not especially entertaining. They're strictly informative, and once you go through once and have the information in your head there's little point in doing so again. A good amount of it is easily found elsewhere, too, such as the internet. Heck, a large portion of it is now taught in classrooms in some sort or another. And a lot of it is frankly out of date - the tomorrow of 1972, when this collection was published, is today's today, or even today's yesterday. There are essays wondering what new discoveries the moon landings might open up, or about its origin (none of the possiblities mentioned, by the way, come close to what scientists are now pretty sure happened), or other such things. As a result, this book becomes largely a relic of the time in which it was written. The only essays of real use, that remain timeless no matter what year it is, are those detailing the history of this discipline or that discovery.
And even then, Asimov's assumption that the reader knew nothing of his subject was at times irritating. There is a difference between a lecture on basic principles and talking down to the readers, and I felt he crosses that line more than occasionally. All in all, this is probably a decent collection to give to a teenager, but for adults something a bit deeper and more current is warranted.
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