arwen_sith posted:Asimov's writing is rather formal by today's standards. Asimov is famous because he wrote almost incessantly from 1938 (got his first story published in 1939 when he was just 19) to his death in 1992. That's a lot of stories. He, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke were the first to really popularize science-fiction. When they started writing, there were no such things as SF anthologies, never mind novels published. All they had were pulp magazines. The three writers mentioned were among the first to get their works published in book form, and helped make SF as popular as it is today.
barabel_humour posted: What about HG Wells and Jules Verne?
ShrunkenJedi posted:barabel_humour posted: What about HG Wells and Jules Verne? I can think of several retorts to this. A lot of Verne's writing (around the world in 80 days...) is actually more adventure-oriented than sci-fi. Both Wells and Verne *are* often talked about in regard to the origins of science fiction. And a lot of the real popularity of SF started with 40's/50's pulp magazines, which Asimov and his contemporaries were a part of and by which time Wells and Verne were not around to interview (although re-circulation of Wells and Verne stories was common, for instance the infamous Orson Welles radio adadaptation HG Wells' of War of the Worlds.)
JediTrilobite posted:ShrunkenJedi posted:barabel_humour posted: What about HG Wells and Jules Verne? I can think of several retorts to this. A lot of Verne's writing (around the world in 80 days...) is actually more adventure-oriented than sci-fi. Both Wells and Verne *are* often talked about in regard to the origins of science fiction. And a lot of the real popularity of SF started with 40's/50's pulp magazines, which Asimov and his contemporaries were a part of and by which time Wells and Verne were not around to interview (although re-circulation of Wells and Verne stories was common, for instance the infamous Orson Welles radio adadaptation HG Wells' of War of the Worlds.) I disagree. HG Well and Jules Verne are the forerunners of Science Fiction. At the time that they were released, they were the first glimpse into the fantastic of the Victorian era. The books, in a sense, are about exploration, which was a very big and popular topic during the time period, and these books, in addition to numerous other, and somewhat lesser known authors, were extremely popular during their time, and still are. The other thing is, Jules Verne alone is possibly responsible for the boom in the 30s, 40s and 50s, as he inspired numerous authors and scientists to go into their respective trades. You can probably make the argument that he's responsible for the Apollo program.
JediTrilobite posted:Ugh, I don't think this book is really filmable, at least not to the point where it'll be as good as the books... They're complex, have a lot of characters and cover a huge amount of time, not something that's easily translatable into a 2 hr film.
