That is “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” widely known because of the Dukas’ symphonic piece and the Disney adaptation in Fantasia. I knew that Dukas based it on a Goethe poem, but did not know about the older source. Thank you!
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I hugely liked Eco’s The Name of the Rose and bought (used) several of his other novels, but haven’t had time to read them yet.
Nice to find a fellow enthusiast for classical literature, and I admire your academic pursuit of it. I have read ancient works all my life (only in tranlation), usually histories and other nonfiction, but I really enjoyed the Argonautica and, last year, The Golden Ass. I’ve taken note of the titles you mentioned. I think Daphnis and Chloe is in an omnibus of six ancient Greek novels that I have.
Ditto to you my comments to Sanonius. Delightful to find fellow enthusiasts. I am often amazed by the modern quality of ancient writings. I felt this most strongly in the Letters of Pliny the Younger, especially when he was talking about lawsuits. And when Tacitus talks about the economic crisis of AD 30 (or thereabouts), I was impressed by the similarity to modern troubles.
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I wasn’t aware of that one! Lucianus wrote that as well O_o
Thank you for reminding me that I have to locate those eventually. I remember that someone told me that they are a good read, but I never got round to finding them.
It goes to show that despite the technological advances, our societies and our interactions with one another do not really follow that upward progress with the same speed. 
In the same manner, though it is by no mean an “ancient” text, I was amazed to find that a speech written by Andreas Laskaratos around 1850 about the economic crisis (and subsequent collapse) of his home island of Kefallonia, titled “Kefallonia is destined to be vanquished”.
What he described within those few pages ( people living beyond their means, over-borrowing of money, the mistrust between the lender and the borrower, the damage made to the agricultural products, the mistakes of the lawmakers and the general lawlessness of the situation) were eerily similar to the modern crisis of the whole Greek country.
Also similar were the solutions he proposed and that could have worked today (returning to a more lawful environment of fairness and respect for each other, reducing favoritism and a return to meritocracy, not spending money that we do not have on thing we do not need and so forth, if I remember correctly).
Also similar would be the reaction to such solutions (he was laughed off the island’s parliament as a lunatic) if anyone proposes them now. 
Sadly the text is only in Greek, but I’ll try and locate the speech and translate it when I have the time so that you can see and judge for yourselves.
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Player of Games - by Iain Banks
Well, re-reading actually. I’ve read it a few times before.
I am a big sci-fi fan, and a great fan of the Culture series (far future where humans are functionally omnipotent and our society is ruled by superintelligent AI).
The character in this book has to learn a huge, complex new game, and many of those descriptions mirror my experience discovering Go to an uncanny degree. Also tries to get at the heart of what our games say about us (i.e. our need to win/dominate as well as empathize/learn from our opponent).
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Thank you for your kind words. Daphnis and Chloe is quite worth the read, and there is a ballet based on it. I read some of Pliny’s letters in high school and was more impressed by the fact, that he kept and published his letters to show off his education and good connections to the Emperor than by their content. I should dig them out from my desk some time to read them again. Euripides’ and Sophocles’ plays are texts I always return to again and again, because I find some questions they raise and answers they provide about the nature of human existence and divine intervention quite beautifully put into words.
And if you’re into violent philosophical debates, Lucianus’ Symposion is the thing to read.
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I read Catcher in the Rye when I was 11 (my parents let me read anything to encourage my precocity) and liked it for its treatment of youthful angst and its central metaphor. However, a reading of the rest of Salinger’s thin output many years later convinced me that he didn’t amount to much as a writer. I don’t think I could go back to Catcher today. Consequently I sympathize with your post, as well as with @Atorrante’s post.
I read Banks’s Consider Phlebas in my SF book group and liked it pretty well, leading me to read his celebrated mainstream book, The Wasp Factory, a book that I admired much more than I liked.
I read all of the ancient Greek tragedies when I was 13 and 14, but didn’t really care for most of them. I persevered only because I thought it was something I ought to know. I should probably reread them today for the reason you mention and because I know so much more about ancient history and myth than I did then.
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If you’re going to reread Euripides anyway, you can read some of his plays involving women, and then you read Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazousai which are a parody on some of them, and Euripides himself is a main character in them (and in a few other comedies).
On a side note, the word ‘parody’ comes from that part of a play where the chorus ‘steps to the side’ to break the fourth wall and talk about current events, such as politics, in a funny way.
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FWIW - I’ve always though of CONSIDER PHLEBAS as the weakest book in the Culture series. I think he focused WAY too much on drawn out action scenes, and it just feels really slapdash and all over the place. I think the other books have better character development, and more complex narrative structure. If you want to give Banks and The Culture another try, I would read them in this order:
- Player of Games
- Use of Weapons
- Excession
- Look to Windward
- Matter
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Got it. Rereading something fairly digestible:
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And @Sanonius
Here is the text I promised. It took me a while to locate and translate, but I think it was worth it
Judge for yourselves if the author is “mad” as some people then claimed 
(As mentioned in the earlier post, Kefalonia is a Greek island).
“Kefalonia is destined to be vanquished” , by Andreas Laskaratos - January 1854
____Kefalonia is destined to be vanquished and every effort to save it is going to be in vain and very late in coming.
____Kefalonia today suffers from a famine and the citizens say that this is a year different from the previous ones, because it had a multitude of unexpexted issues that combined are the couse of our troubles. This is not true and the current situation of our island is a natural and inescapable con-sequence of the chronic corruption of its dwellers.
____ The people of this island have realised finally that they are drowned in debt. The corruption not only has created most of the debts, but also gave them the inspiration to have the desire of finding a way of not paying them back. And that desire has already begun to come to fruition. The borrowers, by using every cunning trick they could put obstacled to the lenders, at first by giving them vague promises of repaying them, and afterwards by slandering them to everyone and trying to directly damage them and their requests for getting repaid. Indeed a borrower could be freed of his debt by a simple oath and ifthe lender would ever want him to be true to his word, he could bring the borrower to the biggest churches, the most revered icons, open the graves of the saints, light all the candles in the church and ring all the bells on the island. All for nothing! There was not a single thing that could bring the corrupted borrower to pay back the money, for the borrower just made an oath to God to replay and proceeded to practically steal the money of the lender!
____ That was the moral situation of our island when at 1848 the French Revolution gave the biggest hopes in the corruption of the Kefalonitians. The Protection ( transl note : He means the British that at the time controlled the island), just for that instance, thought that it would have been a good idea to allow us freedom of speech/print and freedom of voting. Thus the Kefalonitian took advantage of the first to declare anarchy and took advatage of the second to send representatives in the Parliament that would legalise it.
____ Once a Land’s citizens are corrupted, that corruption will inevitably be inserted into that island’s government, because what else is a government of a Land, if not a portion of people reflecting the Land itself? Thus the Representatives of Kefalonia, by bringing panic and fear in the Parliament the managed to satisfy the desires of those that voted them there. None of the bills didn’t declare the curtailment of debt outright, but all of them shaped it, by leaning towards it. Thus the lenders lost their money and the debtors were singing the victory hymns! What the debtors though considered as their victory, was actually the signature of their death warrants, because now noone wanted to lend any money, any longer.
____ We, before the corruption, used to make it through the winter with small loans and rented land which we recieved from the lords. The lords, those that were rich, were serving as a safety measure for the poor and each winter they helped the poor to make ends meet. In the summer, the poor would return the lended money back to the rich. Thus the poor knew that the rich were a safety cache for them and each summer they would go and put in that cache whatever they wished to save for the cold winter.
____ But once this good faith was lost among the population, since the Government itself with its laws bolstered the bad faith/behaviour among us, the total halt of the circulation of money, of debt, of guarantees and all of the other helpful things was inevitable.
____ At the beginning the peasants and the poor tried to seek help to the grain merchants, which speculated on their troubles and gave them grain as collateral for receiving the peasants’ grape production in the summer (and thus we ended up with the grain merchants owning thousands of tonnes of grapes!) but quickly everyone realised that this grain was purchased at ten times its actual worth, and thus the peasants, feeling wronged and having a sense of revenge, made plans so that the grain merchants would share the same fate as the lords. In this behaviour the peasants might have had a semblance of justice, but the result was that now the grain merchants didn’t have grain either!
____ Thus the situation came into a climax. The rich lent their money to foreigners and they didn’t give any loans to the locals any more. The result of this was that the Kefalonitians were driven to the pitiful situation of not owning anything outside their own doorstep and they are totally deprived of any help from their neighbours. Thus Kefalonia today is living in a primal condition, in a condition that animals live in the desert! In that horrible situation it is only obvious that a famine would eventually come upon the Land. It is true that this year’s bad grape crops and the raising of the price of bread made the situation tougher, making the famine come earlier and stronger, but it is also true that without those two coincidences the famine would have happened anyway. There are some phenomena in a society that always have certain and infallible results and thus the loss of good faith amongst the people, always destroys commerce and merchants.
____ Now, someone would ask, how long would this horrible situation will last? This year? Until next year?
____ Alas! Mistrust is not mortal and it dies only when the one that carries it in his soul, perishes. In our faces there is no longer any hope of trust. Poverty, hunger, the horror and the crimes will follow us in our graves! Kefallonia is destined to be vanquished.
____ These days with a Report I made to the Parliament I talked about the corrupt and brigant-filled situation in Kefalonia and asked for their actions. The Parliament listened to me with perfect apathy while I read my Report. Only one membered deigned to open its mouth, just to say that I am mad and that a chamber in the madhouse should be prepared for me. And with that, the case was closed.
____ Apathy towards the the public interest that you were sent there to take measures! A chamber in the madhouse for those that request of you to take action against brigands! Oh, “wise” Lawmakers! Wise, because each of you is minding only his own business, afraid that they might displease anyone, trying to hold on into his seat of power and thus avoiding anything controvertial and anything useful! My Report called for you to look into the deep wounds of our society, which you represent, and you are afraid to do it in order to avoid the displeasure of the mob and lose the mob’s respect. The perch of those that “wisely” try to please everyone in order to rise in power, is so delicate indeed! “Wise” Lawmakers and incompetent! Conservatives and progressives together (transl note : not the actual words used, but that was the dichotomy more or less), with a crippled conscience like yours, I could have had “wisdom” equal to your own!
____ My Report that received the scorn of the whole Parliament of the Seven Islands follows:
Honorable President,
Dearest Lawmakers
____ I wish to present to you the result of my experience that I gained by living in this society for the past ten years of my life. If you do not disregard my words and the facts that I am about to mention and you do not dismiss them like the Senate did last year, I hope that my words will become the seed with might bear fruits for the benefit of our society and, as a result, benefits for you, as well as our Senators.
____ At 1844 the death of my father brought me to be the master of my own self and my fortune. My inclination was to live a quiet life where I would live in the countryside away for the good and bad things of the City. Consequently, since I lacked a house, and having the need to build one, I opted to build it in the countryside. My purpose was just to fulfill my inclinations and thus I strove to embetter the fields and estates that I already owned, instead of trying to procure any more. So, I started working on my fields and maybe I spent more money than my situation allowed in order to improve them and turn them into first rate fields. I added more trees, tended to the already existing ones, removed boulders, drained swamped portions and by working this hard I was also helping others, because anyone that was working for me was always paid in full come the dusk and I was going to leave a better land for the future generation, than the one that I found when I got it in my hands.
____ But, this kind of life which I enjoyed was shortlived. At 1848 the Land recieved Freedom of print and Freedom of voting, both important things that in other - civilised - societies are used to embetter their morals, their spirit, their education and their belongings. We, however, used them like babies use fine glassware. We smashed them to bits and by their pieces we were wounded and bloodied. We, by which I mean the majority of the citizens of Kefalonia, understood the freedom that was given to as, us a freedom to hunt and harm one another! The Courts, the Police and the army still inhibits their “freedom”, and that inhibition protected the Land from a civil war, but whatever other evil could be done outside the protective range of the Government, happened, and it keeps happening. It is true that the honest and well-behaved citizens are no longer harassed publicly in the streets, because the hunger of the past two years has put a dent to the impudence and the vulgarity of the mob, but our fields and ownerships are fully exposed to the immorality of looters and brigands. The looting and the damages incured no longer allow us the ability to farm in our fields. I, with my own hands, was forced to uproot a lot of my best trees, since I realised that they no longer bear any fruits for me, but for the thieves. Some trees I couldn’t bear cutting, because I had planted them myself, but instead I had to go and pick up the fruits early each year and throw them away, so that the thieves and looters would not find the fruit as an excuse to burst in again and damage the rest of my land. This is what I have been doing lately and I will keep doing as long as the Government is idling and not taking any measures against this brigandtry that plagues Kefalonia.
____ Two creeks border my lands and their waters every summer pool and form two lakes in the plains. With the idleness of the government the brigands come and bar the creeks in order to fish the small lakes. Then that water eventually turns sour, swampy and putrid and thus the brigands pay their fish in gold, since they have to pay more money in medicine to be cured. On the otherside of my estate is the sea and every year a family of fishermen come and poach my land and take the earth of my fields and sell it to ships as balast! I called the Arbiter which finding my complaint fair, ordered them to stop, but the police after issuing a fine for a couple of years (a fine which was more of a payment of having a permit, than a punishment) afterwards stopped caring and declared that the issue was out of their jurisdiction. My home! That house that I borrowed money to build, which I sacrificed so much so that I would have a place to live in peace and decorated with care, I was forced to abandon to the brigands, who think that it is a nice place to stay the night and leave within it the marks of their horrid souls. Every time I tried to bring some craftsmen to close my house and repair it, then next day I found it wide open and vandalised! Now it stands there, doors and windows open, with smashed glasses and empty of anything that could be moved and stolen. The doors and windows no longer close and the doors inside are smashed to pieces, by human hands. Those are the trophies and sights that a foreigner could find in Kefalonia and my house, along with a lot of other houses, stay there, in ruins, in silent and eternal testament of shame for the Land and its Government.
____ The healing of the Land is in your hands though. Noone is in better position than you to stop the brigands in our Island. I cannot ignore the fact that in order to do that, you would have to sacrifice much, sacrifice something that most people love above all others, your reputation/regard. Yes, gentlemen, if you want to do good to our society you need to sacrifice your Regard, to your Conscience. Our Land needs strong measures in order to return to the road of wisdom and duty; and you, by ordering those measures, you will lose the regard of the people, but losing that regard is the only way you can actually help them. Putting nightwardens in the fields might have been a good idea, but it does nothing unless the leaders of the brigands are not apprehended and exiled from this land forever. Those leaders of brigands that by day preached their theories in the newspapers in 1849-1852 and then proceeded to give practical lessons of their brigandry in the fields during the nights. And if at that task the Charta (transl notice: He means the laws and rules of the British) you need to remember that the Charta was made for us, and we were not made of the Charta.
Thus ends that small part of the author’s book (The full book is called “The Mysteries of Kefalonia”) …
How many of the things he mentioned do not ring painfully true, no matter where, and when, you live?
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A phenomenal document! It is heartbreaking in its tragedy and eerie in its prescience. As someone has said, the past is preface. It calls to mind so many parallels. I was reminded of notorious government interventions in certain bankruptcies, the collapse of lending in ancient Rome, the limitation on rents (which destroyed the South Bronx), the increasing squatter problem as laws break down, etc. The ultimate outcome of this cycle is the rise of a totalitarian oligarchy, a dictator, or some other form of ruling thuggery, which gains power by restoring order at a terrible price.
Thank you for translating and presenting this fascinating (albeit depressing) work. I deeply appreciate it.
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I am very glad you liked it and find so many historical parallels to it
It really makes me sad how many wondrous texts have been produced in my language, but will never really be distrubuted or read by a lot of people for lack of translation, because a lot of people know the classics and thus their works survive and get translated. But more contemporary writters and philosophers are being overlooked because, let’s face it they are not famous enough to merit a translation and who would buy a book by an international unknown?
In that regard, if you all do not mind me presenting you with a small essay about a very important matter (the nature of truth, no less! 
), by E.P. Papanoutsos. Arguably the best Greek essay writter and probably philosopher of the 1900-2000 era, who is totally unknown outside the country.
The essay which was actually an article written for a popular newspaper back then, was written around 1955 iirc and it is striking to me how much quality a newspaper of that era contained compared to now. The comparisons are sad, but I digress. This essay now is taught at schools and even though when I read it at school it was a bit tought to get, I already had come to similar conclusions myself, but I could not express them or present them in such a fantastically ordered way as Papanoutsos does. After I read that text I said to myself “this is how I want to learn how to write and think and argue” and, in a way, I managed to get my writtings to be like that.
Anyway, here it is (I made that translation for some friends in another forum at 2015, there might be some slight mistakes):
The Relative and the Absolute
_____ The scene comes from inside a bus, one morning hour, when the vehicle is going to its final destination with few remaining passengers. Near the collector sits a rotund, middle-aged woman, which from her furrowed brow is obvious that is anxious to talk and so a dialogue with the person sitting next to her was quick to begin. The woman narrates with fervor, and so that everyone in the bus could hear her voice and how the previous night a taxi driver “stole” from her.
_____While she was leaving the taxi, she gave him a 50 drachmas note to pay for the fare and he gave her back two 20 drachmas coins. She looked at them in the dim light and they looked alike. Perfectly the same, in weight and in touch. This morning though, she discovered that only one of them was genuine and she was enraged. She would go to the police etc etc. Her immediate bystander listens to the woman’s narrative with apathy, he seems preoccupied with his own troubles, and doesn’t give much attention to what she says.
— The damage is small, he said. At least the other coin was genuine. It could have been a counterfeit, as well. Of course the driver showed some kindness…
At that the woman gets more aggravated.
— You consider twenty drachmas an insignificant damage ? We live in the countryside and we live by a small grocery store. Our profits, each time is one or two dekares ( transl note : dekara = ten drachmas). We are not of course people in financial need, and we spend a significant amount of money to satisfy our whims, but to lose twenty drachmas in such a way is intolerable.
This argument seems to move one other passenger and the conversation is getting more general, inside the bus:
— What do you mean by: “The damage is small” ? Twenty drachmas are twenty drachmas, you do not find that kind of money in the street. Madam, you should go to the police and have the culprit arrested.
And here the collector intervenes:
— Why do want to be the doom of that fellow? Maybe it wasn’t his fault. Some other passenger might have given him that counterfeit and he took it without noticing it. With the same carelessness he passed it on to you. He doesn’t have a bank, you know, to cut and appraise coins …
A fourth passenger enters the conversation:
— I say that the driver later on discovered that the coin he was given was a fake. But what would you have him do ? Keep it and lose his whole day’s profit ? Who knows how many mouths were waiting at home …
But that bold defense enrages a far-off passenger:
— What kind of attitude is that ? He shouted. A fraud is a fraud and a theft is a theft. Outlaws should be punished or else society will slowly crumble.
At that moment the curiosity of a silent, till that moment, gentleman gave an unexpected twist to the incident:
— May I see this counterfeit coin ? Do you have it with you ?
The woman took it out of her wallet and gave it to him.
— It is a British Shilling, the collector said with effect. It is worth four drachmas. So, you damage is down to sixteen. So, forget and forgive and keep the coin as a souvenir.
— No, it is not British, said another passenger who at the mention of a foreign coin rushed from his seat to inspect it. It is a Frank of a South American state. I, since I collect foreign coins, (he said to the woman) offer to give you twenty drachmas and take the coin, if you would give it to me.
The woman accepted happily the twenty “genuine” drachmas and the collector pocketed the coin.
— It is old and quite rare, he said to me as we crossed at the exit, it is worth much more than twenty drachmas …
_____The readers of this column are not used in reading anecdotes in this place and might be mystified. My intention though, is not to entertain with a story, but to make them observe a phenomenon that has given the basis on many and deeply though psychological and sociological observations. The scene I narrated (I guarantee that it was a series of events that actually occurred) makes our problem definite and clear: How we judge, and the criterion we use, on evaluating the mood or an action of another person depends on the way (based on our character, our education and how we grew up, our professional needs our goals and so forth) we have positioned ourselves towards life and its merits. Eight people that “meet” in the same place, completely by chance, judge the same incident through eight different spectrums. The one with the “loss” suffers from the damage and the insult that she incured. The others see the incident from their own “position”. One is indifferent, one adds to the point, the third and the fourth offer excuses of the supposedly “guilty” driver, while the last three take different paths: The first one calls up for the upholding of the law, the second one tries to satisfy his curiosity while the last one (and most practical of them all) tries to satisfy his personal gain/interest. I think that all of us can narrate many similar happenings from his immediate environment or his surroundings.
_____In ethical judgments, not all people agree with each other, even those that live in the same era and are enclosed within the same social values. One tends to be stricter or more lenient in his convictions, others (honestly or hypocritically) refer to general rules and other try to adjust their opinions to the facts in hand, judging according to each case; one “puts” more or less of himself (his needs and his interests) in the matter at hand and so forth. All these things just for the way of judgment. About the meters (punishment), the climaxes of variations are equally enormous and colorful.
_____What can we surmise from this asymptote? – The matter is, of course, very complex and enormous in size so this is not the place to even present a synoptic account of every solution that has been proposed during time. So, we must confine ourselves inside some simple and general lines.
_____This problem (as well as many others) can be attempted to be solved with two ways of approaching it. The first one is easy: Either we simplistically declare that only one ethical measure exists (our own) and every deviation from it, instantly means deceit and perversion. Or, out of disappointment, we can fall on the other edge and admit that in our evaluations the existence of “correct/right” is a simple fantasy and that all evaluations are equally relative. The second method is harder exactly because it needs more thought and moderation, so it is followed only by the people that can perceive both the finite and the infinite. With the first value he is confined with relativity; with the other he longs to taste the definite/absolute. Bounds as it is in space and time, this historical and social animal (Note from the translator: He means us, humans. Socrates, iirc, was the first to use the term “social animal” to describe the human kind.) it was natural to be surrendered to relativity (of perception, of beliefs, of intentions). This, however, does not mean that the gates of the absolute are closed forever. In the case of humans, the relative is not the denial, but simply a part of the absolute, in the same way the ephemeral is not the denial, but a continual realization of the eternal.
_____If we look at the subject through this perspective, which means if we consider the absolute (meaning, meter, value) not as something that is beyond the synol of reality, but as synopsis, a conclusion and a finalization of the relative estimations that our spirit conducts – I admit that such a point of view is not easy at all, since the human mind is used in working in a “separating” way, instead of a “unifying” way – then we might give a solution to our problem that might appear to be somewhat of a paradox, but has, beyond the shadow of a doubt, depth and greatness. We will say, for instance, restraining our conversation to a definite example ( the previous one with the bus ) that all the judgments that were expressed contained truth, but did not contain all the truth. Each of them presents the opinion that is derived from a fact, from a set position. It is, therefore, relative, but not unfounded or unreasonable, since they all express a possible and logical judgement of the facts. According to this idea, judgements ( in some cases more and in others cases less successful) towards the absolute are our individual relative appraisals. Other judgements are closer to the absolute and others are less accurate; however, all of them have something of the stature/greatness of the absolute and that is why they are convincing. Those opinions fall down in the area of deceit or fraud if and only if each of those opinions claims for itself the whole area of our trust. The “part” has to be explicitly expressed and be accepted and recognized as a “part”; In that case it is true. When it is presented and acts as the “whole”, it becomes a lie.
—E.P. Papanoutsos - written around 1955 for the newspaper “Ta Nea” (“The News”). Published later in his book “Practical Philosophy”
And I have many more texts and examples like these. Especially that man wrote texts/essays of fantastic wisdom and in a way that most people could grasp and actually think how they could be applied in their everyday lives. Maybe that happened because Papanoutsos was an amazing educator before he was a writter or a philosopher. Personally I still can’t believe that things like these once found their way in newspapers.
Hope you all found it useful
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I very much enjoyed both essays. May I ask if I have understood the second one correctly?
He is saying there is an absolute truth, but there are many things which are mostly true, and we all know, even if we trip up our words when we try to formalize it, that that is a great deal better than being all false.
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He is saying there is an absolute truth, but there are many things which are mostly true, and we all know, even if we trip up our words when we try to formalize it, that that is a great deal better than being all false.
That is more or less the point I think, that absolute truth exists, but it is beyond any one person and that absolute truth on an issue could be formed if somehow we could amass all the data and all the possible valid viewpoints and judgements based on that data ( a bit like multiVAC in Asimov’s “The last question” novel asks for more time and data. Source: https://www.multivax.com/last_question.html <— VERY worth reading by the way, even if it is a small novel. That ending is awesome! 
).
Therefore what is left for us is to form a subjective “relative” truth that is based on our defacto limited knowledge, experience and perception of each situation and as long as we understand that our truth is not the whole thing, then our logical inferences hold value to us and those around us. But if we ever claim that it is the whole truth, then we immediately stumble into the realm of falsehood, even if what we are saying is based on actual data.
At least that is the epimyth I am getting out of it.
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Alright, I agree with him then, and agree with you that it is a very nice presentation of this idea.
Oops, forgot to mention in this post that “The Last Question” is one of the few Asimov stories I have read, though I’d like to read more at some point. It is quite good and well written.
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If you want to read more books of Asimov, your life may be too short.
He wrote SF and popular science books in great quantities.
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I actually thought it was far more short stories than that, but that’s still a ton of writing.
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He wrote about 600 books, articles, etc in more than 50 years. That is about one book per month over a period of half a century. Hope he is in the Guiness book of records, if not: he should be there.
Guess het was a 100% workaholic (and a fast typer).
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I’m penniless at the moment, but if I can ever get a couple of coins to rub together there are three books I want: Memoirs of Hadrian, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, and The Worm Ouroboros.
The cost of ordering Memoirs in from the British Library to my local city one is as much as to buy it online – so much for the public system…
Like @tonybe I’m a big fan of Iain M. Banks’ sci-fi; though unlike him, I enjoyed all Banks’ sci-fi books greatly.
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Please, people, let’s not bandy about these tawdry Hellenistic trappings and other such distractions: we should turn our attentions to that timeless work of sparkling thought by Lord Timothy Dexter, the greatest philosopher of the Western world: A Pickle for the Knowing Ones.
If I may quote but a small extract of this delightful tome:
This Commeth Greeting
mister printers the Igrent or the Nowing wons says I ort to Doue as thay doue to keep up Cheats or the same thing Desephons to Deseave the Igrent so wee may Cheat and Likewise have wars and plunder my wish is all Liers may have there part of fier and brimstone in this world or at least sum part of it or Else the gouement is Not good it will want pourging soone if A Lawyer is to way Lay a man and brouse him unmassely All most to Death A sitteson that pays twentey fore Dolors for Careags and not more then one Dolor A week to ment the hiways and my being Libperel is in part of this bloddey Afare No sauage would beat a man as I was beaten almost to Death I Did not know houe these men Came to keep sade Lawyer from quit killing of me till sum time After three men saw the Axon of the blodey seene without massey and carried sade Dexter in to the house sun fanting or Neare to se and behold the orful site bleading and blind of one Eye twoue brousings in two hours at Least Now Laws in this part of the world for A man of money to Live those I lend money to and A Lawyer and others thay youse me the wost it maks Inemys then these Rogs if there is Any that call me A soull and pick a Qualrel with me A bout my Nous papers so as to pay the Lawyer Craft to make up the molton Calf A molton Calfe Not an Ox Now the town of Chester has Lost two Hundred wate of Siver at Least I beleuv more money Now thay may have me in the town or A Lawyer Chouse for yourselves my frinds and felow mortels pease be with you