so, there is something different about the dr. calvin sections (parts VI and VII, which carries on after her death) in that they're sort of quasi-linear in time. asimov's texts may have overlapping characters (although he never sticks with any specific character for very long), but they're largely one-off episodes, even when the characters are recurrent. even his foundation series is largely unordered in time. so, this calvin sequence, which comes off more like a series of episodes of a television show (before there were tv shows.) is unique in that sense and sort of has to be looked at as a singular text, for that reason. further, that comes out most prominently here in the complete robot compilation - the classic i, robot, which is what i actually read as a child, does not weave these stories together like this.

these stories otherwise pick up on most of the same themes as the previous ones.

i want, however, to point out that i don't think that dr. calvin is supposed to be a likeable character, and i suspect that asimov may have done that intentionally. i wasn't there, but i get the impression that calvin is being intentionally presented as a dour, mother-like figure precisely in order to not make her a sexual object, and asimov's presentation of her is essentially designed to throw off nerdy fan boys, looking for something to jerk off to. in later years, asimov would be presented as a feminist out to shatter gender roles with a strong female role model, but i don't think that was really his intent. i never met him, but from what i can gather about him, i think it's likely that he just found the idea of writing a sexual fantasy to be distasteful and, perhaps even under pressure to do so, did the exact opposite.

in addition to those that would elevate asimov as a feminist writer, there have long been claims of the opposite, that his writings lack female characters. i've never thought this was upheld by the evidence, and have generally deduced that people making such claims have probably not actually read much of his work, and are just using him as a punching bag to take out their dislike of science on - something that asimov does frequently write about. there's some irony that the kind of irrational lynch mob that asimov repeatedly satirizes seems to have actually come after him in real life.

so, what to make of this? was asimov a feminist or a misogynist?

my honest reaction is that it doesn't fucking matter and i don't actually remotely care. asimov was an unusually diverse writer for any period, but he wrote about what he understood. he was not shy in admitting that he didn't understand women very well, so he therefore didn't write about them very much. that's neither good nor bad, it just is. if you'd like to read novels that have female characters that you're better able to relate to (and calvin, as mentioned, seems to have been intentionally written in a way that minimizes the aspects of her character that boys might like, and therefore that many young women might relate to. hey, listen. that is what the critics said, and still say.), you should pick an author that understands women better than asimov did. but, if you're more interested in reading a social commentary that uses robots as characters than you are about reading a book with relatable female characters, asimov still holds up, for what it is.

i'm very critical, but i generally try to criticize a work for what it is, and not for what it isn't. and, as a longtime asimov reader, the question of whether he had women in his stories or not never struck me as relevant, or even interesting.

rereading these, i'm left with the impression of calvin that i think that asimov intended - this is an unsufferable person that few people could like, let alone fantasize about, but that performs the function asimov needs performed. which is what i suspect that he wanted...