"Asimovian." I have used the adjective myself, and I have seen it used by others. What others mean by it I cannot say. But I would like to suggest in some detail what I have found the term to mean….

On matters of style: The typical Asimov sentence is short and clear. His sentences tend to gain length not by the accumulation of dependent clauses, but by the addition of simple sentences: not "The boy who hit the ball ran around the bases," but "The boy hit the ball, and then he ran around the bases." His verbs tend to be colorless, non-meaning-bearing linking verbs, and the meanings of the sentences tend to be carried by their nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. He does not like to use figurative language, so he almost never uses images, metaphors, similes…. Typically, one does not notice Asimov's language, unless one is aware how difficult it is to write this clearly. Lovers of language will say that he is no stylist; lovers of communication will admire and envy him. I think Asimov's language represents in a quintessential way the language science fiction writers aspired to during the Golden Age, the Campbell years of the forties. (p. 255)

The narrative point of view [in Asimov's fiction] is almost always third-person limited, with that person being the central character of the story. Even when he is working with a large cast of characters in a novel, say, and must move about among them, each scene tends to be narrated solely from the point of view of one of its participants, rather than from the point of view of an omniscient outside observer. Asimov lets us see fictional events the way we see life: through the experience and observations of only one person.

Generally, the central character of a story is named and put into action in the first sentence. That is, the subject in the first sentence we read will be the central character's proper name, and its verb will let us see that person doing something…. His central characters are usually white middle-class males on the sunny side of forty, because the market he writes for is composed largely of such people.

The problems these people have to solve generally involve the making of decisions rather than the performing of actions. At least, even in a basically action-adventure story, decision-making is shown to take precedence over doing things. Very often this decision-making is done by two or more people in conference. This tends to change the story from the personal to the political. It also has the advantage of externalizing the decision-making process and thereby giving the reader something to watch and listen to. Interior monologues are not as available to us in everyday life as conversations. This emphasis on conversation and decision-making, instead of on activity for its own sake, gives Asimov's fiction a certain cerebral quality, which is one of its most distinctive traits.

The stories usually begin very soon after a problem has arisen. The initial situation and the problem are passed along to the central character—and, in the process, to the reader—by someone who thoroughly understands both. Asimov is excellent at the dramatic form of exposition. It is another form of conversation, and he knows how to move stories through conversation. He sometimes uses the flashback for exposition, but he is less consistently good at this method. He tends either to allow the time sequence to become a bit muddled (e.g., The Currents of Space) or to become redundant by using both dramatic exposition and the flash back to pass along the same material (e.g., "The Key").

The conflicts in an Asimovian story usually involve difficulties in the way of accumulating data, in interpreting that data, and in deciding what to do as a result of the data and its interpretation. A calm, reasoned approach, rather than a hastily-arrived-at emotional one, provides the solutions to the stories. The resolutions generally mark a return to the status quo. In this sense, he is a conservative writer. The most important Asimovian theme is the importance of science (data-collecting) and reason (data-evaluating and decision-making).

Asimov's stories are set in the immediate and far future, and on Earth and distant planets circling other suns. He seldom sets stories in the past, on alternate worlds, in other dimensions, or in countries other than the United States or future extensions of the United States. His backgrounds are meticulously worked out and scientifically accurate. One leaves an Asimov story with the feeling of having lived for a while somewhere else. This ability of his to provide his settings with that "lived in" quality is another of Asimov's most distinctive features.

Unfortunately, his characters do not share as much as they should in the convincingness of his settings. One does not leave an Asimov story convinced that he has lived for a little while with real people. The characters tend to do and think what they must for the sake of the story rather than for their own sake. In his fiction at least, his interest in people is theoretical not personal, general not particular. Asimov's fiction reflects an interest in the physical, chemical, biological, and astronomical phenomena that life makes available for study, not in the experience of living itself…. It focuses on what is generally true of and for us all rather than on what is specifically true of and for only one person. His fiction shows no interest in and scarcely an awareness of two extremely personal elements in all men's lives, religion and sex. As a result, his people are depersonalized to the extent of being dehumanized. I might use an aphorism to describe Asimov's characters: they are not people, they are story parts.

Fiction humanizes and specifies the general. I find it very instructive when Asimov admits he gave up science fiction for science writing so he could write directly about science without the bother of considering people and people's behavior. (pp. 256-58)

Besides these narrative techniques of style, narrative point of view, plot, theme, setting, and character, three other things strike me as being usually present in an Asimovian story. Asimov loves everything about science, including its history (and he loves history, too). Present in many of his stories are informative little history and history-of-science lectures…. Second, his fiction is filled with astronomical views, what it looks like to be out among Jupiter's moons or Saturn's rings or in orbit about a newly discovered planet of a distant star. Once again, in science fiction the sense of wonder is sight, and Asimov wants us to share that sense of wonder with him: the sublimity and the beauty of what there is to see out there. Third, Asimov's fiction reflects his delight in the surprise ending, the story that goes click! at the end….

For me, all of the above is included in the term "Asimovian."

But the adjective implies a steady state. Asimov has written fiction since 1938. Is that fiction all of a piece, or has he developed in any specific ways through the years? (p. 258)

Realistically, I can see only two major changes in Asimov's career. The first was in 1938–39 when he changed from science fiction fan to science fiction writer, and the second was in 1957–58 when he changed from science fiction writer to science writer.

During his career as a science fiction writer, however, I can detect only two relatively minor developments. One of these was in his style. His early stories abound in the violent diction of the pulps. There is more emotion of a nonrealistic sort in that early fiction. As he wrote, he mastered the medium of clear, unemotional language. A second development was in the kinds of backgrounds he used. The backgrounds of the early stories are imitated from contemporary science fiction. As he wrote, he began to put together his own backgrounds based on contemporary science. (p. 259)

[Asimov] has, I think, to choose between two kinds of story that he has in him to write. I do not expect him to turn to drastic stylistic experiments, to try to develop an imagistic style and strong verbs. He will continue to write like Asimov. The choices lie in his subject matter. He could continue to do what he has been doing of late: mining old material. The old familiar series, the old familiar settings, the old familiar characters. Supplying nostalgic trips for his many fans.

Or he could follow up in the direction I see him hesitantly looking in a couple of his most recent stories. To do this would require two major changes in attitude on his part, changes I don't believe he is ready to make. The first would be to take fiction seriously, and the second would be to write fiction about those things that are important to him….

The first change carries in it the assumption that he does not now take fiction seriously. I don't think he does. For Asimov, fiction is merely entertainment, merely a way of passing time harmlessly. He downgrades "the eternal verities" and has little use for critics who see deep meaning and significance in his work. (p. 260)

Admittedly, the general theme of his stories has always been the ability of human reason to solve problems. But what problems has human reason been set to solving in his most recent fiction?… [Later stories such as "Feminine Intuition" and "The Computer That Went on Strike" teach the] value of reason, yes, but that reason is applied to trifles which are completely beside the point of Asimov's main concerns. His stories actually serve to distract us from the real problems which he sees all around us. He cannot take his fiction seriously if he insists on using it in such inconsequential ways at a time when he sincerely believes civilization as we know it is breaking down.

In his fiction Asimov is cheerfully optimistic. In The Caves of Steel the overpopulation problem has been solved, as have the problems of the stripping of the Earth's natural resources, of pollution, of nuclear war, of uneven distribution of wealth, of nationalism…. But we know that really he is pessimistic about our civilization's surviving this century. Where in his fiction do we find an emphasis on the things he is really concerned about?

I do not wish to be misunderstood here. I am not saying that Asimov ought to turn to the writing of what he calls tomorrow fiction…. I am trying to be descriptive, not prescriptive, and what I am saying is that in some of his most recent fiction Asimov seems to me to be moving in the direction of taking fiction seriously and of writing about things that really concern him. I see him doing this primarily in two works, and therefore, for me, they are the most important things he has written lately, The Gods Themselves and "Waterclap." (pp. 262-63)

"Plutonium-186" [which provided the basis for The Gods Themselves], is an ecological story on a grand scale. It is a story developing exactly those themes about which Asimov has spoken so pessimistically in his nonfiction. We are doing too little too late. Overpopulation, hunger, disease, pollution, fuel shortages, inequitable distribution of wealth—things will get a lot worse before they get any better, and they may never get any better. The resolution of the conflict in "Plutonium-186" is in accord with this thinking. (p. 264)

Where is the cheerful, slick-magazine optimism in this? This is Asimov looking at the world straight and telling us what he sees, in fiction. He is not playing intellectual games or merely being entertaining. He is saying something important, to him and to us. (p. 265)

The three separate parts of The Gods Themselves are all very good stories. Put together they do not form a unified whole. Put together in their particular order, they also show Asimov backsliding. In The Gods Themselves Asimov takes both of the two paths I have suggested are open to him, and they are incompatible in one novel. He cannot present simultaneously his bleak evaluation of the crisis situation in which we find ourselves and his buoyantly optimistic story line…. That Asimov can write "Against Stupidity" and "The Gods Themselves" I take as a hopeful sign. That he chose to cap them off with "Contend in Vain?" I take as an indication that he is not yet certain whether he is looking to his future or to his past. (pp. 269-70)

"Waterclap" integrates two projects that must fascinate Asimov both as a science writer and as a science fiction writer: the exploration of outer space and the exploration of our own oceans. He could have written an essay asserting in nonfictional terms a possible relationship between the two, but instead he wrote a story demonstrating in fictional terms that space-ocean exploration is not either-or but both-and. (p. 270)

Joseph F. Patrouch, Jr., "Conclusions: The Most Recent Asimov," in his The Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov (copyright © 1974 by Joseph F. Patrouch, Jr.; reprinted by permission of Doubleday & Company, Inc.), Doubleday, 1974, pp. 255-71.