[Frondo]

I read it as an adult and was disappointed by the flatness of the characters and the almost-total absence of any female characters.

To clarify: I'm not saying that people should shoehorn women into stories to satisfy a quota, I'm saying that stories that include women are simply more interesting, because they display a wider range of humanity and of the human experience.

Or, to put it another way, it's just boring to read a story where all the characters fit within a very narrow range of personality.

[meatysnapper]

I donno, Plato's Dialouges are pretty interesting.

[fishnchips]

Sure, but 2500 years passed since and you'd expect writing to get a bit better. And yet Homer's characters are way more nuanced than Asimov's. Also, in Plato's Dialogs characters are completely irrelevant and are merely instruments that directly represent philosophical standpoints.