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Context matters. The first guy to write X is a luminary. The next 50 people to write variations of X start falling along a spectrum, from luminary to hack. After that, everyone except children have been exposed to X, and anyone writing about it seems trite.

I suspect you've read a lot of works derived from Asimov, and now the original seems trite (when you read it after all the stuff derived from it). But the work remains foundational.

by andyjohnson06 hours ago|

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The triteness was more in the ending than the overall exposition. Humans create computer, computer creates universe->humans.

> I suspect you've read a lot of works derived from Asimov

You're probably right, although the transitive chain of derivation is necessarily long. Clarke - probably not derivative. Blish and Cherryh (some), Stapeton, Lem, Heinlein (the juveniles, as a kid), Baxter, Banks, Gibson, Ken MacLeod, Charles Stross, Peter Watts... I dunno.

I did grind through the Robot books as a child, and the Foundation books that he wrote. But just because they're foundational (no pun intended) doesn't stop them feeling stuffy and dated now.

(And as an aside, it strikes me now that Clarke's The Nine Billion Names of God is kind of the anti-particle to The Last Question.)

by Nav_Panel7 hours ago|

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Nah I agree with you, as someone who's read a lot of Asimov. As far as MULTIVAC stories go, I always preferred "All The Troubles of the World" (https://schools.ednet.ns.ca/avrsb/070/rsbennett/HORTON/short...).