Analysis of the Fun They Had by Isaac Asimov

Text Analysis of
THE FUN THEY HAD
by Isaac Asimov Student: Ceban Mihai EN31
Science is a cemetery of dead ideas
Miguel de Unamuno
The story that I want to present and to comment on is entitled “The Fun They Had” by Isaac Asimov. He was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90 000 letters and postcards. Asimov’s most famous work is the “Foundation series”. He also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much non-fiction. One of the most common impressions of the Asimov’s fiction work is that his writing style is extremely unornamented. James Gunn observes that there are places where Asimov’s style rises to the demands of the situation. In addition his stories also have occasional internal contradictions and complicated narrative structure, often by arranging chapters in non-chronological way. According to UNESCO’s “Index Translatiorum Database” Asimov is the world’s 17th most translated author, just behind Arthur Conan Dyle and ahead Pope John Paul II. “The Fun They Had” is the most anthologised of all Asimov’s stories.
The text under discussion is a very unusual one, not because of plot structure or something of this kind but because of the idea, the things that the author speaks about, for us are in a way related: from the point of view of technology in our era. To illustrate the writer’s main point, I have to present the summary of the text. So, it can be done in this way: “The story takes place in the year 215, where teaching is performed by computer - like robots. The protagonists of the story are 2 children, Tommy and Margie. Tom finds a real book in his attic. They are very surprised by the object because the words on the page do not move like the words on the screen of their mechanical teacher. The book describes the...