I'm looking for books and essays on Isaac Asimov published in recent years. I've already done some research but all I could find was material written either in the Sixties or Seventies. I need it for my graduation thesis, because the teacher who follows me said I'd need something more recent (possibly written in these last few years) to use for the analysis part of the thesis. I live in Italy and critique on sci-fi/Asimov is practically non-existent over here. If you could give me some advice, I'd then either buy the books from Amazon or ask for an international loan. I'm also thinking of planning a trip to the US/UK to search for material there. Could you help me? I don't know where else to ask.
Well, he died in 1992, so you're not gonna have anything very recent, I think. I looked on wikipedia and saw something published in 2003, so you could check there.
Yeah. I've rechecked, and it looks like there had been a good wealth of criticism on Asimov through the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, with Janet Asimov's It's Been a Good Life published in 2002, but nothing as recent as my teacher asked me for. Next time I see her I'll tell her I didn't find anything except for the books listed in the bibliography I've already sent her. Looks like all recent works of criticism on sf are about sf in movies, television and games, but we've already ruled out the possibility of discussing works of non-literature.
Yeah, done a full scale research on Amazon. First thing I did. Found the books I've inserted in the bibliography I gave to the teacher. She said the books were too old. I'm thinking of changing author. I've found a good wealth of criticism on William Gibson and the cyberpunk and they've all been written in the last decade. At first I thought I would do Asimov, because he's a classic, at least she was bound to have heard the name, while Gibson is for more hardcore readers, at least in my country. Yet, it might be worth a try, to ask her do research on Gibson instead.
Seems a bit odd for the teacher to be saying the information is too old. Information might be either good or bad; it's age seems pretty immaterial. Sorry if I'm telling you how to suck eggs but, you've used Google Scholar but have you searched using Advanced Google Scholar, inputting dates of say 2005-2011?
Yep. I tried. But nothing useful. Found things like Computational Principles of Mobile Robotics, but don't think I can use it for a graduation thesis on anglo-american literature. But I agree, it's odd for her to be asking for up-to-date information, since if a text is well written and the information it contains is trustworthy, the age shouldn't matter. For the most part Italian universities don't have guidelines for graduation thesis, so whichever quirk a teacher thinks might hinder his/her students, there you have it, she'll gonna hassle you...like...forever. Might be one of those rules no-one wrote down but the teachers agree with. A friend of mine had to re-write the text like eight times before her teacher even accepted to look at it. Oh, well. I asked the librarian at our department's library to help me expand the bibliography, as my teacher advised me to do. If she doesn't find anything more recent than a 1996 text which I already included in the original bibliography, then I'll go and meet the teacher again and see what she tells me. If she says the bibliography won't work, I'll try and ask her if I can do Gibson instead. If she says she doesn't know anything about Gibson and I can't do it, I'll think of another theme and look for a more suitable author.
