Disgusting comment! Dr. Asimov was brilliant man and a brilliant author.
Ogden Nash wrote a line that I have always remembered: "The old men know when an old man dies."With the years this line has become ever more poignant to me. After all, an old person to one who has known him a long time is not an "old person" but is much more likely to be thought of as the younger person who inhabits our memory, vigorous and vibrant. When an old person dies who has been a part of your life, it is part of your youth that dies. And though you survive yourself, you must watch death take away the world of your youth, little by little.
There may be some morbid satisfaction to being a survivor, but is it so much better than death to be the last leaf on the tree, to find yourself alone in a strange and hostile world where no one remembers you as a boy, and where no one can share with you the memory of that long-gone world that glowed all about you when you were young?
He began as a marxist and ended up a democratic humanist who liked the idea of philosopher kings, thought society could be organized and guided from above and the future predicted and controlled (somewhat).
No thanks. Had enough of his type last century. Save us all from "brilliant" men. Books were OK. Kinda mechanistic, humorless and pedantic though.
Assimov wasn't in the same league as Philip K. Dick--the best American writer since Mark Twain.