[janwillemb]

His point is that the Orwellian way of surveillance is impossible to do in practice, and that a proper science fiction writer would have left the surveillance to machines. So I think his critique is about the art of SF writing, not about the prediction of surveillance itself.

[f4c39012]

Asimov missed the idea of the panopticon here, whereby control is self-enforced by the fear of being caught because you can be watched at any time, not all the time

[kergonath]

That’s just gate keeping. How hard does science fiction have to be in order to be considered worthwhile? Why does it matter?

[whizzter]

Asimov's sci-fi has both hard and soft parts (especially his later works).

The main thing is that Asimov was more of a bright person(mensa member and professor) and good at making conjectures about development based on technology and it's impact on humans, rather than a great writer per-se (there's some famous interview from the 70s that makes a fair bit of things that weren't obvious at the time).

Like how he immediately goes to the feasibility of non-human total surveillance when concluding that the total surveillance of a population on the level of 1984 by humans is infeasible.

So this review is to large parts to be taken as an post-fact analysis about 1984 both from a standpoint of the predictions of it's conjectured future and an attempt to see _why_ conjectures failed (much of it, being attributed to Orwells need to expose his hatred for how infighting perverts socialistic causes).