{"id":1224,"date":"2018-09-05T15:00:48","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T21:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1224"},"modified":"2018-09-03T14:29:30","modified_gmt":"2018-09-03T20:29:30","slug":"book-the-currents-of-space-1952","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2018\/09\/05\/book-the-currents-of-space-1952\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: The Currents of Space (1952)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1391308130l\/8381380.jpg\" alt=\"The Currents of Space\" width=\"318\" height=\"285\" \/>The Currents of Space<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 1952<br \/>\nAuthor: Isaac Asimov<br \/>\nLength: 475 minutes \/ 7.92 hours<\/p>\n<p>For the first time, it seems that I\u2019m reading a series backward. Of course, it was also written a bit backward, which explains why I\u2019m going about it this way. While<em>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2018\/08\/08\/book-pebble-in-the-sky-1950\/\">Pebble in the Sky<\/a><\/em>\u00a0was the first book in this series, it actually comes at the end of the narrative. A year later, Isaac Asimov would write the prequel,\u00a0<em>The Stars, Like Dust<\/em>, which was then followed by a book that fit between the two.\u00a0<em>The Currents of Space<\/em>\u00a0is that book. Fortunately, there isn\u2019t much tying this book to\u00a0<em>Pebble in the Sky<\/em>, other than the universal setting for the events to take place.<\/p>\n<p>It is encouraging that Asimov\u2019s writing was able to improve in two short years between his first ever novel and this follow-on prequel.\u00a0<em>The Currents of Space<\/em>\u00a0has a distinct main character, apparent conflict, and well-timed plot revelations. The focus of this book helps to describe a somewhat interesting and thrilling scenario, even if it\u2019s peppered with lots of clich\u00e9s that are still present to this day. The \u201camnesiac expert\u201d is by no means a new or unique storytelling device by today\u2019s standards, but it may have been interesting back in the 1950\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the improvement in Asimov\u2019s writing, there were still a few choices that I felt were perhaps due to the weaknesses in\u00a0<em>Pebble in the Sky<\/em>. In his first book, it was difficult to grasp everything that was happening. In\u00a0<em>The Currents of Space<\/em>, one of the characters does an exposition dump that amounts to a recap of the first two-thirds of the book. While there was some added info to this information that led to the satisfying conclusion of the plot, it still seemed unnecessary if the reader was paying attention up to that point.<\/p>\n<p>An improvement over his previous work in the series, I give\u00a0<em>The Currents of Space<\/em>\u00a03.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Currents of Space Year: 1952 Author: Isaac Asimov Length: 475 minutes \/ 7.92 hours For the first time, it seems that I\u2019m reading a series backward. Of course, it was also written a bit backward, which explains why I\u2019m going about it this way. While\u00a0Pebble in the Sky\u00a0was the first book in this series, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,54],"tags":[164,55,1421,1423,8,1455,1456],"class_list":["post-1224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-0-stars","category-book","tag-164","tag-book","tag-isaac-asimov","tag-pebble-in-the-sky","tag-review","tag-the-currents-of-space","tag-the-stars-like-dust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1224"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1233,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224\/revisions\/1233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}