Kryptin OP t1_j9z0aum wrote on February 25, 2023 at 4:41 PM

Reply to comment by UnderstandingDry4072 in Asimov's Foundation Is Bad Literature by Kryptin

I really can't say. Lots of authors have good books and not so good books. Dickens later writings were good, but his earlies works like Pickwick Papers and Sketches by Boz were insufferable. Same goes for Joseph Conrad. Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, I think these guys generally wrote well. For Sci-Fi, H G Wells, Jules Vernes, Mary Shelly I'd rank over Asimov.

UnderstandingDry4072 t1_j9z9qjd wrote on February 25, 2023 at 5:43 PM

So I think what has most people in this thread so hot and bothered is not that you didn't like Asimov, specifically; it's that you leaped immediately to saying that he's a bad writer.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but it's perceived as fairly immature and self-centered to equate "I don't like this" to "it must be bad." Personally, I hate the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Herman Melville, and Hemingway, but I'm not gonna say they're bad writers.

It's okay to not like something and just move on, but I guess that wouldn't be very Reddit.

Skeptix_907 t1_j9zdp33 wrote on February 25, 2023 at 6:09 PM

To be fair, you're strawmanning him. He didn't say Asimov in totality is a bad writer; he said that one of Asimov's books is bad. That's a world of difference.

UnderstandingDry4072 t1_j9zf3mo wrote on February 25, 2023 at 6:18 PM

Nah, read the rest of the comments, man. They've said Asimov is "hardly a skilled writer" and "Austen isn't a very good writer."

ReadyProposal t1_j9zrh1v wrote on February 25, 2023 at 7:39 PM

What a pathetic response.

fckuse t1_jacxipp wrote on February 28, 2023 at 3:20 PM

If a writer writes ONE great book remembered A HUNDRED years after their death, they're GREAT WRITERS...