The Naked Sun
by Isaac Asimov (Doubleday, 1957)
audiobook read by William Hope (HarperVoyager, 2024)
A short story’s worth of mystery spread rather too thin across a novel-length exploration. With Earth detective Elijah Baley as his mouthpiece, Asimov pits two extremes against one another and thus postulates his way deeper into the sociological implications of robot dependency.
Foundation
by Isaac Asimov (Gnome Press, 1951); audiobook read by William Hope (HarperCollins, 2019)
A collected sequence of SF novellas taking inspiration from the fall of the Roman Empire. Asimov’s ideas aren’t without interest but the prose is workmanlike and the characters little more than mouthpieces. The future, apparently, contains infinitely more expository speechmaking than women.
Prelude to Foundation
by Isaac Asimov (Doubleday, 1988)
audiobook read by William Hope (HarperVoyager, 2023)
Self-indulgent. Asimov trades on his name more than his ideas, with middling prose and revelatory twists that survive only through clumsy concealment beneath a glut of character-voiced speculation as to how future society might function. Hope’s Seldon accent is a brave choice.