2.4 KiB
[RT] Just finished 'The Stars, Like Dust' by Isaac Asimov - anyone else think it qualifies?
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Author: u/Pluvialis Second Age Sauron*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/1ymoed/rt_just_finished_the_stars_like_dust_by_isaac/
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Score: 7
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Created: 2014-02-22T16:07:43
Post:
I was not that impressed to start with but I just didn't realise that it's actually a fairly decent 'mystery' sort of story, not so dissimilar from what I imagine Sherlock Holmes is like. Wikipedia labels it as a 'whodunit'.
Anyone else read it and think it fits within our budding new genre?
Comments:
u/None [+1] (2 hours later)
Did you know that you can post hard scifi stories here and use the [HSF] hard scifi tag even though the story doesn't include explicitly "rational" character or is this just general discussion about the "rational" -ism of the story?
u/Pluvialis [+3] Second Age Sauron (2 hours later)
It's really not hard scifi. It's only scifi at all cos it has planets instead of countries and spaceships instead of boats; it could easily have been set in 1700s Earth.
u/KJ6BWB [+1] (3 days later)
The whole story is a build up for the "ultimate weapon", which didn't exist back in 1700's Earth, it only exists in modern times. The whole story is basically propaganda for how amazing and powerful the ultimate weapon really is. That being said, the protagonist does seem to embody rationalist ideals, with how he apparently sets things up to prove various scenarios down the road (although those aren't demonstrated until later, when the plans come to fruition). The only time he's tripped up is when there's some bit of information that he couldn't have known. That's the way most of Asimov's protagonists are -- a sort of modern-day Sherlock Holmes type of person. No, I don't mean that they can see the state of a person's suitcoat and infer the person's occupation, I mean that they pick up on the little hints and bits of plot and innuendo that Asimov only ever touches on tangentially (so as to mislead us, the reader) and from those bits spin out just what exactly was happening.
u/Pluvialis [+1] Second Age Sauron (3 days later)
Apparently the ultimate weapon was pushed on Asimov and he really didn't like it, which I can definitely sympathise with.
It could really have been anything, or nothing, though, and the rest of the story would have held.