disappointing; perhaps more realistic in ways than first book, but still outlandish in other ways; characters were all flat, one-dimensional; main character was a wimp ( )

I like Asimov's stories and will eventually read them all. This one was for the science geeks and had a nice story to go along. Unfortunately it was overly long and had a very average plot. ( )

Weird. Sequel or replacement (for the original Fantastic Voyage)? Must be replacement, or the US wouldn't contemplate working with the Soviets. Much deeper characterization but also much more unpleasant people. But the last line was a riot. Oh, and I figured the reveal way before any of the characters did - the love surge told me and the panic confirmed it. Another I don't need to reread. ( )

Isaac Asimov once wrote a rather good science fiction adventure novel where five scientists and their submarine are shrunk to the size of a microbe and injected into the body of a comatose scientist. This is not that novel.

I am, of course, talking about his novelization of the movie script for Fantastic Voyage, which he was never quite happy with as it wasn't his own book. Instead, this is the novel he wrote 20 years later, with the same basic premise. Unfortunately, it's more than twice as long as Fantastic Voyage, and while the science may be slightly more solid it also lacks any sense of wonder; the first book (not to mention the movie) was fast-paced and exciting enough to make the plot holes forgiveable, but this one moves like a slug, with the crew bickering every step of the way.

It is possible to write "cerebral" science fiction and make it interesting, as Asimov himself demonstrated quite a few times, but here he doesn't even come close to pulling it off: instead, he manages to take this fantastic, fascinating concept and make it boring. (And it doesn't have Raquel Welch in a tight diving suit, which is a point in favour of the original movie.) ( )

This is a described as a sequel to Asimov's novelisation of the film script from the 1960s (which was written by someone else). In fact it is a completely different universe and set of characters, just using the same ideas. As an Asimov creation from scratch, it is rather more cerebral than the original book and at nearly 500 pages is somewhat too long. Nevertheless, it is for the most part a good page turner and the ending is quite dramatic. It is rather dated in being written in the late 1980s at the time of Soviet glasnost, but before the Soviet collapse was obviously inevitable, so the depiction of an existing Soviet Union in the 21st century now looks a bit odd. All in all, a reasonable novel, though far from his best. ( )