Asimov Estate Authorizes New I, Robot Books

daria42 writes "In a move guaranteed to annoy long-term science fiction fans, the estate of legendary science fiction author Isaac Asimov, who passed away in 1992, has authorized a trilogy of sequels to his beloved I, Robot short story series, to be written by relatively unknown fantasy author Mickey Zucker Reichert. The move is already garnering opposition online. 'Isaac Asimov died forty years after they were first written. If he had wanted to follow them up, he would have. The author's intentions need to be respected here,' writes sci-fi/fantasy book site Keeping the Door."

Comments

How about we pay the author not to write them?

[cephalien]

Probably too late for that. Sigh :(

Re:How about we pay the author not to write them?

[PapayaSF]

If these are the same idiots who "authorized" that god-awful movie

It's not really their fault. Here's how Hollywood works: when the film rights to a story are bought, the filmmakers almost always have the right to do whatever they want with it. This means they can totally rewrite the story, or even slap the title alone on a different, barely-related story. This is why Graham Greene (IIRC) once said that the best deal authors could get from Hollywood was when the film rights were bought but no movie was ever made. (This frequently happens: the rights to Stranger in a Strange Land, the Foundation Trilogy, and many other works have been bouncing around in Hollywood for many years.)

Re:How about we pay the author not to write them?

[MeatBag PussRocket]

FWIW i choose to use my intelligence when considering an adaptive work of any sort, be it a movie based on a book or a book based on a book.

its like this: if i'm from Brooklyn and go to Pizza Hut i'd be a FOOL for expecting the pizza to taste the way it does at home, if i'm from Texas and go into Taco Bell expecting tex-mex i should be shot for stupidity, so why then would any reasonable person go see a movie adapted from a book and expect it to be faithful to their own imagination or even the original authors storyline? Taco Bell isnt bad food, as long as you take it for what it is neither is Pizza Hut. Personally i enjoyed both the Asimov stories as well as the iRobot movie, but i just know what to expect from each.

also, i dont see anyone roasting Timothy Zahn for his star wars novels. personally i think many of those are better than Return of the Jedi, and definitly better than Lucases last three 'epics' if thats anything to go on, i'm glad Asimov never wrote another robot book, it could haev been worse than Danielle Steele

Re:How about we pay the author not to write them?

[postbigbang]

The sad thing is that when you look on a bookstore's shelf, there's hardly anything left of 'hard' science fiction.

Apparently, to sell a book in the 'sci fi genre', it needs to have a touch of orc death, or perhaps an alternate universe where there's a some sort of hierarchical plot involving robes, old truths, and perhaps incantations.

I long for Azimov, Heinlein, Dickson, Ellison, Sheckley, etc. Even Pournelle and Niven have seemingly hung up their stirrups.

Movies from these guys' works? Unlikely to work. The CGI of the mind is not the CGI of the screen.

Re:How about we pay the author not to write them?

[chesapeake]

You should read Alistair Reynolds then - it's probably the best (and sadly, probably nearly the only) new hard science fiction there. It's really very good.

If you're not sure, try reading Galactic North - it's a collection of short stories, most of which are set in the Revelation Space 'universe'. It's interesting in that there is no travel faster than c, and people are the usual - grubby and self-serving - no Captain Picards.

Re:How about we pay the author not to write them?

[ClosedSource]

Well, Foundation didn't even start out as books but was a series of short stories in a science fiction magazine.

Nevertheless it was a trilogy for a long time. There were thirty years between SF and FE.

Re:How about we pay the author not to write them?

[Nitewing98]

Don't you mean "R. Danielle Steele?"

Re:How about we pay the author not to write them?

[FrankSchwab]

As a counterpoint, I submit LOTR.

There are a couple of scenes that I found absolutely awful; totalling maybe 60 seconds out of the, what, 7 hours of movies?

As someone who had read the series a dozen times over, well, a few years, I have to say that the movie is a shining example of what can be done in translating from paper to film, but so seldom is.

/frank

0th law of famous sci fi writers' estates

[syousef]

The 0th law is thou shalt sell out and cash in big.

It overrides the other 3 laws ;-)

Cry, Robot...

[kclittle]

... this is just _wrong_!

Re:Cry, Robot...

[Brian Gordon]

Why, because someone is making books with the same name? If it offends you, don't read them. If you always wanted more I, Robot then read them.

Nobody's going to be calling them canon.

Elitism

[Djupblue]

What kind of elitist crap is that? I love Asimov's books, I have read most of them and they probably helped shape me in a way. I say that if someone wants to have a go at some sequels the go right a head. I don't think that they will be even comparable but I might enjoy them anyway. The worst thing that can happen is that they are not worth reading.

Re:Elitism

[R2.0]

The delicious irony is the wailing about "author's intent" and bemoaning someone other than the original author covering the same ground coming from a group that would gladly see copyright curtailed so that EVERYONE would be free to butcher an author's vision after a period of time.

Re:Elitism

[zach_the_lizard]

The delicious irony is the wailing about "author's intent" and bemoaning someone other than the original author covering the same ground coming from a group that would gladly see copyright curtailed so that EVERYONE would be free to butcher an author's vision after a period of time.

The thing about not having copyright on the book is that there could be no 'official' sequels. Everything would be, more or less, fan fiction. Sure, some of that fan fiction could be marketed and sold, but it is not 'official' fan fiction.

Oh, whatever

[Angst Badger]

The author's intentions need to be respected here.

The author no longer exists, and therefore cannot possibly have intentions.

That said, this kind of posthumous sequel is almost always a disaster, but that's only a problem for the people who read them. If the idea bugs you at all, rest assured that you are bothered infinitely more than the original author is.

Re:Heh

[PaintyThePirate]

No, that would be the same if Asimov rose from the dead and decided to write three more books.

Re:Sigh

[QuantumG]

No-one knows jack about AI.. most can't even define it.

And if you thought his books were about AI, you completely missed the point.

Bullshit

[aussie_a]

The travesty here isn't that someone is writing sequels to the original series. The travesty is that his heirs still have a monopoly on the series, 57 years later.

People writing sequels to books is the right for society to continue to enrichen our culture. Regardless of the quality of the works that will be produced, society grows by garnering inspiration and aid from past works. I'm sure Shakespeare has inspired and helped many a person in learning the trade of creating stories. The tragedy here is that companies like Disney reap all of the benefits of the public domain, while ensuring very little will ever be added back to it.

Before I get attacked by those who believe you have a right for all time to your ideas, this is a modern construct. Society managed to survive millenia without the damn thing. And as someone who seeks to earn their living in the software industry, I would quite happily place my work in the public domain voluntarily after a period of 25 years.

It is a little late

[rssrss]

To complain about this. Asimov himself had begun the work of integrating the Robot stories with his Foundation/Galactic Empire stories. All kinds of prequels and sequels were written by the master himself and by other authors and this is just more of the same. Details here.

Now, here is my question. In the original I Robot stories, the robot's positronic brains were made out of something referred to as Platinum-Iridium sponge. As this is written, Platinum is $1325/troy oz. and Iridium
is $425. Aren't you grateful that real computers are made out of silicon. Was any adjustment of technology made in the subsequent Robot stories?

Re:Sigh

[Canazza]

Asimov did not write hard sci-fi in any definition of the word. It was soft sci-fi, focusing mainly on social sciences, like psychology. Any proper scientific discipline lacks technical detail, infact he *Made Up* the science of robotics, from scratch. That's not what Hard Sci-fi writers (like Clarke) do. The Foundation series is definitly soft-sci fi, and more of a space opera than anything else. (Note the difference between Hard, Soft and Pulp sci-fi. Hard and Soft are equally valid as science fiction, its all a matter of taste. Pulp Sci-fi is the likes of Planet of the Apes, Forbidden Planet, Flash Gordon or hell, even Star Wars, that use Science Fiction as a thin veneer for action orientated stories)

Asimovs ideas are what drives the story in I, Robot, not the science. His ideas stand the test of time, if not the technology (His earliest stories pre-date the invention of the transistor, so futuristic computers still take up warehouses and use vacuum tubes and punch cards)

I have almost all of Asmiov's Sci-fi output in my library, I absoloutely adore it for it's unfaltering charm and idealism, as well as it's interesting, twisting plots (Particularly Caves of Steel)
The only licensed sequel I've enjoyed was Mirage by Mark W Tiedelman, admitedly I've not read many of them but there are quite a few. The second Foundation Trilogy, Caliban and Robot City. From what I've heard, both Caliban and Robot City were decent attempts and stand on their own, but the Second Foundation Trilogy was all but trash.