I personally wouldn't characterize Asimov's writing as anything near awful. It's simple, yes-- but only enough to bring a layman sensibility to the most esoteric and abstract of concepts.
It depends on what you're looking for. His settings are mind-blowing (the more so when they were new and you didn't have Singulatarians running around blowing your mind twice as hard) and his stories dramatically sound, but his characters tend towards simplistic and dialog is pretty rough, even by contemporary standards.
This isn't a criticism he'd be surprised by. He said so himself, several times, in some of the books I have. Romance in particular was a weak point of the entire genre during his era, and he admits it's because they were all pretty stereotypical nerds.
Fortunately, that's not why we were reading his books.
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I personally wouldn't characterize Asimov's writing as anything near awful. It's simple, yes-- but only enough to bring a layman sensibility to the most esoteric and abstract of concepts.
It depends on what you're looking for. His settings are mind-blowing (the more so when they were new and you didn't have Singulatarians running around blowing your mind twice as hard) and his stories dramatically sound, but his characters tend towards simplistic and dialog is pretty rough, even by contemporary standards.
This isn't a criticism he'd be surprised by. He said so himself, several times, in some of the books I have. Romance in particular was a weak point of the entire genre during his era, and he admits it's because they were all pretty stereotypical nerds.
Fortunately, that's not why we were reading his books.