i just finished about 30 hours of audio of “the complete robot” by isaac asmiov.

i’ll have a nicer analogy over in the jeromecast, but here are some thoughts:

  • wow. this was long.
  • this was also a trailblazing work, opening up tons of thoughts about robots. i bet literally every sci-fi writer who’s written about robots was influenced at least in some way by a story in this collection.
  • i found the experience of bunches of short stories, featuring consistent themes and some common characters, to be really enjoyable. i also like writing short stories, so maybe that’s why.
  • i didn’t enjoy every story, but i did enjoy that the exploration of the themes was pretty exhaustive. for almost every area you might have wanted to consider, from robot psychology to human/robot relations, there was at least some discussion.
  • i’ve never been a huge asimov fan, but i think this may have changed my mind. i’ll consider trying a few more of his works and see if that changes.