Quantum Storytelling

So I’m trying to read this third robot series book, The Robots of Dawn. And I just can’t get into it. Why? Because even sci-fi greats like Asimov make the fatal mistake of rambling too much about stuff the reader doesn’t give a crap about.

He’s devoted pages and pages to arguing between detective Bailey and his robot partner R. Daneel. They’re debating the ‘murder’ of a robot, and whether a robot can be murdered. R. Daneel, programmed to think of only humans as ’sacred’ believes that a robot cannot be ‘murdered’ in the human sense. Bailey is of course trying to argue that robots can be murdered.

It’s an ironic situation, and interesting in theory. The problem? It’s some of the most boring reading of the entire series, and I’d rather go read something else.

I’m about two paragraphs away from throwing the book in the trash and reading something else, because I can’t stand the pedantic hair-splitting that Asimov seems so fond of in these books. Two characters are arguing about something that has little or nothing to do with the story itself. Get on with it. Action! Action!

And he feels the need to cite his famous Third Law of Robotics on every other page.

The Robots of Dawn is 435 pages. I’m on page 50 and almost nothing has happened yet except the basic setup and the hero arguing with a robot. Failure… pure failure.

50 pages is almost HALF of a typical film script. Now, I’d be forgiving of this sort of thing if the setup was very detailed, and those details were crucial to the main thrust of the story. But in the case of Robots of Dawn, it’s not. Asimov is taking his time, rambling here and there on misc. topics, info dumps, and self-amusing intellectual masturbation.

Nobody should do this to the reader. Not even sci-fi greats. This is the epitomy of what I hate about writers and novels. It makes me sad to say that, because I enjoyed the first two books of the series and have no doubts that Asimov earned his credibility. This is just such a disappointment.

Some people may be tickled by this sort of thing, but I’m not. If this were adapted to film, this argumentative rambling would be gutted. Nobody would watch the hero arguing with a robot for 30 minutes, no matter how ironic or interesting the situation might be.

I’m starting to understand how Asimov wrote 400 books. Writing 400 books is easy; Just ramble.