Customer Reviews

Magic (Isaac Asimov's Magical Worlds of Fantasy)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Collection of short stories and articles, emphasizing his few fantasy motifs. Most of these stories take a type of narrow satire on aspects of contemporary culture, decently amusing but hardly transcendent fiction, and nothing here comes to the level of the stories in Gold. The reviews are decent, but a bit general, and oriented towards a specific moment in the literature. Very little of the broad claims made on fantasy as against science fiction writing still hold.

Perhaps the most interesting article in here is the one on Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which Asimov blasts as a travesty, poor science, poor writing, arbitrary aliens. I haven't seen the film and can't judge the fairness of it as criticism, but this protesting the move in cinema to strong visuals and poor writing seems exceptionally contemporary, strong shades of Avatar.

Bought this book a really long time ago, in fact, I regret to have lost it now. The stories in this anthology were all very interesting and entertaining, I especially like the one written by Poul Anderson on a world similar to ours inhabited by normal people who just happen to be witches, werewolves, vampires and the like. The others aren't as happy as this and will cater to a more blood thirsty and mature audience. The only bad experience I had with this book was that the last few pages of my favorite story got torn out and I never did get to finish it.