https://lithub.com/what-to-make-of-isaac-asimov-sci-fi-giant-and-dirty-old-man

What a stud.

I also like Asimov’s Foundation stuff, for entirely different reasons.

He wrote well in that he wrote in no particular style. (Someone claimed that writing in no particular style is a style of writing.) I get the impression that both he and Clarke tried to be more literary in their later works, but it felt pasted on. Literary writing is very good if you get it right, but they were both plot-driven authors; they should have stuck to that.

Parker received a PhD in English literature from Boston University in 1971. His dissertation, titled “The Violent Hero, Wilderness Heritage and Urban Reality,” discussed the exploits of fictional private-eye heroes created by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald.

I then had to look up Ross Macdonald. He wrote the Lew Archer novels.

Once he discovered there was more money to be had as a sci-fi writer, he more or less gave up being an Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Boston University.

I find it interesting that two of my favorite writers, Asimov and Robert Parker, were faculty in neighboring universities, Boston University and Northeastern University (my alma mater).