>> I might be unusual in the sense that in my teens I absolutely adored Asimov as a writer of non-fiction rather than as a sci-fi author.
That's because he was only the second-best sci-fi writer but the best science writer in the world at the time [Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue|https://sfandfantasy.co.uk/php/the-big-3.php]
I don't remember reading any Clarke short stories, though I do remember a few books favorably - but Asimov's stories were incredible, and stick with me to this day. I should get a few more of his short story collections for the kiddo, I think I have a few of his non-fiction ones on a bookshelf somewhere.
brilliant stories both, but my two favourite asimov shorts are "profession" (I really, really love the trope that a regimented society depends on outcasts and outsiders for any sort of innovation) and "the martian way" (one of his more minor shorts, but it captures the joy and optimism of golden age solar system exploration fiction like nothing else I've read)
If Lem was there, he would likely have agreed to dedicate his books to "the best third-rate scifi writers", given his generally critical view of American/Western scifi as naive, "commercial trash", and shallow entertainment.
Not all Western sci-fi are gadget dangling spaceship displays. That might have appeared as the trend to Lem, and I don't blame him. I have only Solaris that's by him, and gotta admit- it's on another level.
> It's unfortunate that works of great non-fiction writers evaporate away from our cultural consciousness after their death.
That's a bit of an overstatement? There's Confucius, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, ... Darwin, Newton, Einstein, ... Jefferson, Decartes, .... (you get the idea).
It is a competitive field; what's sufficient to win attention in the current generation is often not enough for future generations, which have their own contemporary writers.
In The Building Blocks Of The Universe's section on Calcium:
> Another way of getting round the problem of hard
water is to manufacture compounds that behave like soap
but don't form insoluble compounds with calcium. Many
types of such detergents have been put on the market in
the last ten years, and hard water is far less of a problem
for the housewife than it used to be.
Reads like '90s era comedy, ala "women be cleaning, amirite?", without even the lazy backdoor of "its just a joke".
This is such an uncharitable reading. "Housewifes" were extremely common then and were marketed to quite extensively in those product categories. Acknowledging them in some form is not the same as saying "I have deeply thought about the state of our society and have come to the conclusion that all is as should be."
I don't know if it says good or bad things about me, but I never noticed that.
But maybe it's just because I started reading his works long after their initial release. In particular, I was quite surprised to later learn that "Asimov's New Guide to Science" was originally published as "The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science".
>...The book's title was Svirsky's, chosen as a deliberate homage to George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928). Asimov feared the title would be seen as elitist and condescending, and he suggested Everyone's Guide to Science as an alternative, but Svirsky refused. Years later, when he was confronted by annoyed feminists who asked why the book was restricted to men, Asimov would claim that the "intelligent man" of the title referred to himself;[3] thus anticipating the title Asimov's Guide to Science adopted for the third edition.
For the current generation, I never miss a chance to mention Gamow's non-fiction.
It's unfortunate that works of great non-fiction writers evaporate away from our cultural consciousness after their death.
It makes me sad that there will be a generation, or maybe it's already upon us, one that has not delighted in Martin Gardner.