I Read Books: The Winds Of Change

 

The Winds Of Change And Other Stories

A collection of Isaac Asimov science fiction short stories from 1984, near the start of his final flurry of SF writing. In the introduction he responds to claims that he no longer writes SF by noting that this in collection of 21 stories, 19 of them date later than 1976.

So what do we have? Several slight joke (pun) vignettes, and one less slight that makes a point. A couple of cool, atmospheric SF mysteries. Some serious thinking about future situations, some contrived, some minor, some very serious. Perhaps sadly the last, titular story, with the most interesting form and the most powerful message, is rather didactic when a lighter touch would have made the point as well while making for a better story.

I looked this out for A Sure Thing, because I remembered the pun but not the set up.

Read This: For some cool, old-school science fiction stories
Don’t Read This: The better stories are slight, the serious ones are not so good
As Far As I Can Tell: Neither the collection, not the title story The Winds Of Change inspired in any way the Scorpions in their song of the same name