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Asimov wrote and published over 400 books in his lifetime, including textbooks on mathematics, science and physics. I would hardly describe his life's body of work as "twaddle".
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I've nothing against Asimov, I do have criticisms of his work, but on the whole I like his stuff a lot. If you don't believe me, just go to
http://www.dogscoff.co.uk/fiction and click "influences".
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There is nothing wrong with inventing hypothetical technology in the context of telling a story.
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Absolutely. I have been known to do it myself from time to time. I might not be published, and
as I clearly state in the "influences" page I directed you to just now* I wouldn't put myself on the same level as Asimov, but I *was* including myself in the the collective term "scifi writers" when I referred to their (and therefore my own) output as "twaddle".
Because let's face it, it is. No matter how much fun it is to write and to read, and how cleverly researched, and how often a writer gets lucky and actually predicts or inspires something, scifi is nothing but telling tall tales with a little fancy guesswork mixed in.
However, I digress. The point I was trying to get across was that the "classification of civilisations" thing posted earlier has nothing to do with "inventing hypothetical technology". It doesn't describe a technology at all, it's just an arbitrary and largely meaningless statement that sounds to me like it was just made up by someone or other because it sounds a bit cool and a bit scientific and a bit like the three laws or robotics and a bit like the Drake equation, despite the fact that it is waaaaaaaaaay too vague to have any basis in actual science.
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He also hated the term 'scifi', preferring science fiction, or S.F. for short.
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Too bad, I like 'scifi', or better yet, 'sciffy'. Sorry Mr Asimov
*EDIT: The bit in italics is actually stated in a different part of the same site. Click "Courier" to read it, instead of "influences". Read the courier stories while you're there=-)