I have read most of Isaac Asimov's science fiction novels. So when I was recently in a mood to read another of his books, I turned to one of the few that I hadn't yet read: Nemesis. If you like Asimov's style and/or other books, then you will probably like this one too. Here's what I thought of it.

Exploring Asimov's Galaxy

I discovered Isaac Asimov when I was 17 years old. I was with our high school track team at an out-of-town meet, and after the first day we all went to the mall. Since I lived in a small town that didn't have any mall, this was a big thing! One of my favorite things to do at the mall was visit the book and music stores. Well, it was this visit, while I was browsing through SF novels, trying to find something new to read, that I finally decided to give this classic author a try. After careful consideration I settled on trying out Foundation. It was a wonderful book, and it instantly become my new favorite novel! I then went on an Asimov reading binge and quickly finished all the other books in the Foundation series, followed by the Robot series.

I loved the classic SciFi feel to his novels, and I assumed that everybody else would too. Sadly, that wasn't so. I recommended Foundation to many of my friends and family, and none of them ever got past the first book. I couldn't understand what was wrong, until my brother told me that he didn't like all the dialogue in Asimov's novels. Hmm, well, I could see his point - Asimov novel's do have a lot of dialogue in them! As I talked to more people I realized that many of them didn't like this aspect of his writing either. And there were other things - like the fact that they were mostly written in the 1950s and felt dated. I, however, loved them! And when I was recently in the mood to try another Asimov novel, I turned to one of his later, stand-alone novels: Nemesis.

What's It About?

The story in Nemesis follows two lines: one about an astronomer on a space station, and her talented daughter. The other about a secret agent who tries to find out where they have gone. In this future version of our solar system, the space settlement Rotor has decided to leave Earth's system, and uses its new found knowledge of hyper-assist to skip along to a recently discovered neighbor star. Before going, however, one man leaves his wife and daughter on the station and returns to his native Earth. We learn that he was actually a secret agent trying to get technological secrets from the station. However, for many years afterwards he continues to think about his infant daughter, and longs to find her again.

The other storyline follows (you guessed it!) the astronomer and her young daughter, who join the others on the station as it zips out of the solar system. Over the years the daughter, Marlene, grows up and displays a fantastic ability to read people's body language. Many people don't like this ability of hers, and so try to banish her to the farthest reaches of their new settlement on a moon in the new system. She doesn't mind this though, and comes to discover something extraordinary about this world-like satellite. Now if she and the other Rotorians can just make enough advances before the other people from old Earth come looking for them, then everything will be OK... probably.

My Rating:

• Story: - Most of the story was fine, but the ending was really cool! The characters, however, were a little bit stereotypical: the evil administrator, the worrying mother, the calm and comforting boyfriends - stuff like that. If you've read other Asimov novels then you'll recognize a lot of the character types here.
• Writing: - Like I said, I am a big fan of Asimov and so I liked how this book was written. Nothing mind-blowing here, but it does convey everything in a nice, illustrative manner. Lots of dialogue, though.

Where to find Nemesis

• This book was written in the late 1980s, so your local library is bound to have a copy that you can borrow for free!
• You can get both physical and electronic versions of this book at Amazon.com.^†

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