I, ASIMOV : A MEMOIR

Rating:
Summary: One of his best!
Review: "I, Asimov" is not just an informing autobiography, it is rather a wonderfully written tale of the most personal experiences and thoughts of an author who made himself known around the world. The reader will not only get informed about Asimov's personal life, but will discover his rich and smart views on life in general as well as a vast amount of information about the character traits of many other prominent SF-authors of the golden age and today. This book is great and, unexpectedly, keeps one reading straight to the end. Recomended to all devoted fans of Asimov as well as anybody else...

Rating:
Summary: Superb, ultimately sad, memoir.
Review: "I, Asimov" was the penultimate book to pour from the pen of Isaac Asimov. During a career that lasted over five decades, Asimov wrote on more topics than virtually any other writer in literary history. From the sciences to history and Shakespeare to the Bible, his clear, concise writing style and ability to simplify even the most complex ideas earned him the nickname "The Great Explainer." His fiction, with the exception of his early Foundation novels, "The Gods Themselves" and some shorter pieces, consisted largely of filler. Nonetheless, by the time of his death, he was quite possibly the most famous SF writer of his time.

Asimov's first volumes of autobiography were published in 1979 and 1980. As his health declined and the end drew near, his wife, Janet, encouraged him to write a third volume, less explanatory and more introspective. He obliged. "I, Asimov" lacks the surface detail of the early memoirs, but is rich in thought, emotion and self-revelation. The man that emerges from these pages was witty, intelligent, kind, loyal and genuinely devoted to sharing his knowledge and talents with others. He could also be vain and arrogant, but he is so honest about these less-attractive attributes that the reader is willing to forgive him anything.

There is a cloud of nostalgia and approaching death that hangs over most of "I, Asimov." The book was written when the author knew he didn't have long to live, and the book reflects that state of mind. In the end, however, it is uplifting and optimistic rather than depressing and gloom-ridden. What keeps me from giving it a full five stars is the rather dull middle section, which is significantly less interesing than the beginning and ending. The first 150 pages of the book are particularly unputdownable. All in all, this is a superb memoir and well-worth reading. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Superb, ultimately sad, memoir.
Review: "I, Asimov" was the penultimate book to pour from the pen of Isaac Asimov. During a career that lasted over five decades, Asimov wrote on more topics than virtually any other writer in literary history. From the sciences to history and Shakespeare to the Bible, his clear, concise writing style and ability to simplify even the most complex ideas earned him the nickname "The Great Explainer." His fiction, with the exception of his early Foundation novels, "The Gods Themselves" and some shorter pieces, consisted largely of filler. Nonetheless, by the time of his death, he was quite possibly the most famous SF writer of his time.

Asimov's first volumes of autobiography were published in 1979 and 1980. As his health declined and the end drew near, his wife, Janet, encouraged him to write a third volume, less explanatory and more introspective. He obliged. "I, Asimov" lacks the surface detail of the early memoirs, but is rich in thought, emotion and self-revelation. The man that emerges from these pages was witty, intelligent, kind, loyal and genuinely devoted to sharing his knowledge and talents with others. He could also be vain and arrogant, but he is so honest about these less-attractive attributes that the reader is willing to forgive him anything.

There is a cloud of nostalgia and approaching death that hangs over most of "I, Asimov." The book was written when the author knew he didn't have long to live, and the book reflects that state of mind. In the end, however, it is uplifting and optimistic rather than depressing and gloom-ridden. What keeps me from giving it a full five stars is the rather dull middle section, which is significantly less interesing than the beginning and ending. The first 150 pages of the book are particularly unputdownable. All in all, this is a superb memoir and well-worth reading. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: A book written from the author's deathbed.
Review: Asimov finished this book shortly before he died in 1992--on a sad day for sf fans who admired him. Of course his fame went much further than that, for Asimov was the foremost "explainer" of science in our time. I admit a bias toward him since he was good enough to answer three letters I wrote him at the tender age of twelve or so. But I will not sentimentalize him, nor claim great things for his fiction. He was a competent plotter and had good ideas. No one reads his work for its characterization or style. Nevertheless, he has been praised by writers John Gardner (author of Grendel) and Thomas Pynchon. This book, published two years after his death, gives a vivid impression of his last attitudes about his life and those who were part of it. He comes across as an insecure workaholic who clung to the people he loved (his second wife and his daughter), and surrounded himself with casual acquaintances to while away the time with, especially with meals and speeches where he was the center of attention. His charisma is evident, but his continual references to women being attractive (something he always did) gets old. He was of his generation, coming of age in the late thirties. The sadness of his last years, especially due to friends dying, is palpable. He is frank about conflicts with his first wife (whom he was never happily married to) and other writers. The table of contents reads like a non-alphabetized index--if you're looking for something specific about his output or life, you can quickly scan to find it. Recommended to those who already know and like this author's work.

Rating:
Summary: Honest, engaging recapitulation of his life
Review: I am in complete agreement with the person who referred to Isaac Asimov as a natural resource. While he certainly ranks at the highest level in terms of output, no one can challenge the breadth of his writing. I learned more science from his books than I did in taking the courses en route to a double major in biology and chemistry.
In this personal recollection of his life, Asimov is as always honest, even when it is embarrassing. He makes no apologies for his life and actions. To use the old phrase made famous by sportscaster Howard Cosell, he tells it like it was. Which is a necessary precondition for an engaging set of memoirs.
His life and how he performed throughout is a lesson for us all. It may be said that Asimov is one of the lucky few who was able to find work that was also his passion. While true, he also is to be commended for pursuing it when other options were available. Like all of us, he encountered several forks in his life and he was clever enough to follow the best of all his possible worlds.
Issac Asimove was above all things conceited with justification. His life was interesting and there is no better role model from which to guide yours.

Rating:
Summary: Delightful reading about a reamarkable man - Highly recommen
Review: I bought this book with some reluctance, I have not read any book by Asimov since I was in College (In Memory Still Green (old book), Nemesis (kind of new book at the time).
Supposedley with age I was somewhat a more "sophisticated" reader, whatever that means, and even though I greately regret Asimov's death at the time, I did not feel compelled to buy any more books by him after that time.
This Christmas among the several books I bought to spend the Holidays I bought I Asimov, and I did not expect too much since I thought that its fragmented structure, with different topics was kind of haphazard, and just a marketing plot to exploit the author`s fame postmortem.
Boy I was wrong!, from all the books I read this past month, this really made an impression, it was like being in the same room with the man himself, and to hear his evaluation of his memories, and his outlook in what his final days would be.
Since I was a teenager I enjoyed Asimov`s fiction and nofiction, but I can say that I enjoyed the most when he wrote about himself, and the world he inhabited, I highly appreciated his sincerity, humor, and authenticity.
It always warmed me to read about how this boy from very humble origins got to get to the top of the the craft that he so much loved.
This was a very emotional book to read, I laughed aloud many times, and shed a tear at some of the last essays.
I highly recommend this to anyone who has or has not read Asimov in the past, as an account of a man`s life, his virtues, deffects, accomplishments, and the legacy he left for his family, readers and fellow human beings.
Finally, I do not think that the Good Doctor had to worry about being forgotten any time soon, each new genaration that reads any of his books will keep his ideas and dreams alive.

Rating:
Summary: You, Asimov! You, baby! You! You! You!
Review: Isaac Asimov was just The Man, plain and simple. This book is a collection of dozens of little 2-4 page essays, dealing with myriad personal topics in his life, which amounts to a history of the very field of science fiction, in a lot of ways. He gives his account of his dealings with a lot of the other luminaries in the field -- Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Hal Clement, Lester del Ray, and lots of others. These accounts are always interesting, and often full of helpful little insights into the characters of other science fiction writers.

One interesting thing -- he says that he had no ability at all to be a critic, in the sense that he couldn't criticize his own work, or anyone elses. He knew if he liked it or not, but that's as far as it went. For me, that was probably the most telling little essay in the whole book. The only author in history to have authored books classified in every single section of the Dewey Decimal system, one of the most prolific writers EVER, simply had no inner critic. He just wrote, and wrote, and wrote. Anyone else out there who finds that interesting, and possibly helpful to them somehow, might want to check out "Writing Without Teachers" by Peter Elbow, or, relatedly, "Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. (Yes, I'm serious about the spelling of that guy's name).

You also get a clear sense of Isaac Asimov's strong sense of self-respect, and his fundamental optimism about humanity, and his warmth. I'm glad his voice is still out there, on the printed page, reaching more people even after he has passed on.

Rating:
Summary: witty, engaging, and a little melancholy
Review: Isaac Asimov's autobiographical books are some of the funniest, most interesting, and most thoughtful books you can find these days, but they're frequently overlooked for his huge range of sci-fi and nonfiction works. This book is very funny, packed with anecdotes and stories that tell you a lot about who Asimov was as a person, but it also contains a tragic note that his other autobiographical books do not contain, as it was barely completed before his death, and contains a posthumous epilogue by his wife, Janet. The book is amusing and interesting, but contains more reflection and sadness than his other books. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: He outnumbered us all
Review: The accomplishments of Isaac Asimov are very great indeed. He is probably the all- time best explainer of science to the layman that the world has ever known. His mastery and competence in most areas of scientific learning is a tribute to his great intelligence and persistence in learning. He is considered by those who know the field one of the premier writers of Science Fiction. He wrote something like four- hundred and seventy books, and provided to his readers a little library . His ideas, especially those on the ethical code for Robots are now part of the intellectual legacy of mankind.
With all this he had his limitations which were in a sense the limitations of his virtues. His work on humanistic subjects on the Bible and on Shakespeare reveal the same kind of one- dimensional quantitative mind so suited to explaining science and so poor to comprehending humanities. Poetic complexity is simply not part of his make- up.
This autobiogrphy has the same kind of flat surface and tone that Asimov's other writings do. It is possible to fault him on all the countings , all the self- serving business of trying to establish his own value by counting up the numbers of things he has done. It is possible too to fault him for his bad relation to key people in his life, including his first wife and son. It is possible also to see that his great scope in learning was achieved at a price in depth. Asimov is not a poetic, and not a religious and not a truly literary soul. But again he is a person who has contributed a tremendous amount to the broad public's understanding of Science.
As I do not believe ' numbers can be the true measure ' of the worth of what is most important I have a quite reserved attitude toward Asimov. A unique and distinctive and in many ways remarkable figure but by no means a great writer.

Rating:
Summary: More Interesting Than His Works of Fiction
Review: The first biography that I ever read. It was written in the final year of Isaac Asimov's life. I found the book to be entertaining on many fronts. First of all, Asimov was a devout atheist all the way until the end, although he was technically Jewish. Secondly, it was interesting to find out that a man that wrote over 50 science fiction books and over 400 books in all, almost never left the city of New York...ever! Finally, what I liked most about the book was how flawed an individual Asimov appeared to be, especially in the characterization of his children. He obviously loved his daughter and despised his son, David, although he refused to say that in so many words. This book was clearly better than any science fiction novel that Asimov ever wrote.

Isaac Asimov
Wrote About Space and Time But
He Never Left Home