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and absolutely unexpected in a work of this kind. Ike, if you can do this, why are you bothering to write science fiction at all?
Damon Knight, [Review of The Naked Sun], Infinity Science Fiction 2, No. 5 (September 1957): 9899
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Robert Silverberg
This bulky new volume (The Rest of the Robots) comprises the companion to Asimov's I, Robot, which Doubleday reissued last year after the customary parade of editions. That book included nine linked stories dealing with the evolution of positronic robots; it set forth Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics, and developed them in every imaginable way, resulting in what amounted to a textbook demonstration of how to write stimulating science-fiction. (. . .)
Asimov's stories go into these multiple editions for one reason above all others. They are marvellously interesting, wonderfully readable, intellectually provokinggood stories, that is. They get re-re-reprinted because they find an eager readership. Pinning down the qualities that make his work so good is a curiously difficult job, though. His prose does not sing like Ted Sturgeon's; his characters, while they are no stereotypes, do not attain the depth of the people in a Budrys novel; his imagination does not soar like that of Arthur C. Clarke; he buckles no swashes in the Poul Anderson manner. The stories are quiet, methodical, deliberate. The style is precise and unobtrusive, at least in the novels. There is a lot of talking, remarkably little action.
What's the secret? Internal consistency is part of it; an Asimov story always makes sense from start to finish, because its author obviously is in complete technical control throughout. Dexterity of plotting is another factor; the twists and turns and bypasses are superbly managed. Asimov is a storyteller in the classic tradition, with long grey beard and glittering eye, and when he begins to speak we cannot choose but listen.
Robert Silverberg, [Review of The Rest of the Robots], Amazing Stories 39, No. 3 (March 1965): 12526
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David N. Samuelson
Asimov's prose style is superior to that of many writers of pulp fiction, but here too he seems to be aiming at a

 
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