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Isaac Asimov (January 2?, 1920? – April 6, 1992), was a
Russian-born American author and professor of biochemistry, a highly successful
writer, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science
books.
Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited
more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. His works have
been published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System (all
except the 100s, Philosophy).
Asimov is widely considered a master of the science-fiction genre and, along with
Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, was considered one of the "Big Three"
science-fiction writers during his lifetime. Asimov's most famous work is the
Foundation Series; his other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the
Robot series, both of which he later tied into the same fictional universe as the
Foundation Series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like
those pioneered by Robert A. Heinlein and previously produced by Cordwainer Smith
and Poul Anderson. He penned numerous short stories, among them "Nightfall", which
in 1964 was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America the best short science
fiction story of all time, a title many still honor. He also wrote mysteries and
fantasy, as well as a great amount of nonfiction. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr
series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French.
Most of Asimov's popularized science books explain scientific concepts in a
historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in
question was at its simplest stage. He often provides nationalities, birth dates,
and death dates for the scientists he mentions, as well as etymologies and
pronunciation guides for technical terms. Examples include his Guide to Science,
the three volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and
Discovery.
Asimov was a long-time member and Vice President of Mensa International, albeit
reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and
aggressive about their IQs". He took more joy in being president of the American
Humanist Association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science
Fiction, a Brooklyn, NY elementary school, and two different Isaac Asimov Awards
are named in his honor.
Asimov was born sometime between October 4, 1919 and January 2, 1920 in Petrovichi
shtetl of Smolensk Oblast, RSFSR (now Russia) to Anna Rachel Berman Asimov and
Judah Asimov, a Jewish family of millers. His date of birth is uncertain because of
differences in the Gregorian and Hebrew calendars and a lack of records. Asimov
himself always celebrated it on 2 January. The family name derives from озимые
(ozimiye), a Russian word for a winter grain in which his great-grandfather dealt,
to which a patronymic suffix was added. His family immigrated to the United States
when he was three years old. Since his parents always spoke Yiddish and English
with him, he never learned Russian. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught
himself to read at the age of five, and remained fluent in Yiddish as well as
English. His parents owned a succession of candy stores, and everyone in the family
was expected to work in them. Science fiction pulp magazines were sold in the
stores, and he began reading them. Around the age of eleven he began to write his
own stories, and by age nineteen, having discovered science fiction fandom, he was
selling them to the science fiction magazines. John W. Campbell, then editor of
Astounding Science Fiction, was a strong formative influence and eventually became
a personal friend.
Asimov attended New York City Public Schools, including Boys' High School, in
Brooklyn, New York. From there he went on to Columbia University, from which he
graduated in 1939, later returning to earn a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1948. In
between, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the
Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station. After the war ended, he
was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving for just under nine months before receiving
an honorable discharge. In the course of his brief military career, he rose to the
rank of corporal on the basis of his typing skills, and narrowly avoided
participating in the 1946 atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll.
After completing his doctorate, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University
School of Medicine, with which he remained associated thereafter. From 1958, this
was in a non-teaching capacity, as he turned to writing full-time (his writing
income had already exceeded his academic salary). Being tenured meant that he
retained the title of associate professor, and in 1979 the university honored his
writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal
papers from 1965 are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which
he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gottlieb. The collection fills 464
boxes, on seventy-one metres of shelf space.
Asimov married Gertrude Blugerman (1917, Canada–1990, Boston) on July 26, 1942.
They had two children, David (b. 1951) and Robyn Joan (b. 1955). After a separation
in 1970, he and Gertrude divorced in 1973, and Asimov married Janet O. Jeppson
later that year.
Asimov was a claustrophile; he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces. In the first volume
of his autobiography, he recalls a childhood desire to own a magazine stand in a
New York City Subway station, within which he could enclose himself and listen to
the rumble of passing trains while reading.
Asimov was afraid of flying, only doing so twice in his entire life (once in the
course of his work at the Naval Air Experimental Station, and once returning home
from the army base in Oahu in 1946). He seldom traveled great distances, partly
because his aversion to aircraft complicated the logistics of long-distance travel.
This phobia influenced several of his fiction works, such as the Wendell Urth
mystery stories and the Robot novels featuring Elijah Baley. In his later years, he
found he enjoyed traveling on cruise ships, and on several occasions he became part
of the cruises' "entertainment," giving science-themed talks on ships such as the
RMS Queen Elizabeth 2. Asimov was an enormously entertaining, prolific, and
sought-after public speaker. His sense of timing was exquisite; he never looked at
a clock, but invariably spoke for precisely the time allocated.
Asimov was a frequent fixture at science fiction conventions, where he remained
friendly and approachable. As noted above, he patiently answered tens of thousands
of questions and other mail with postcards, and was pleased to give autographs.
He was of medium height, stocky, with muttonchop whiskers and a distinct
Brooklyn-Yiddish accent. His physical dexterity was very poor. He never learned how
to swim or ride a bicycle; however, he did learn to drive a car after he moved to
Boston. In his humor book Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston driving as
"anarchy on wheels." He demonstrated his love of driving in his science fiction
short story, 'Sally', about robot cars. An observant reader will notice that he
gives a detailed description of only one of the cars within the story, which he
calls 'Giuseppe' from Milan - which means that Giuseppe was an Alfa Romeo. None of
the other vehicles , not even the titular vehicle of that story receive as specific
a description. Asimov did not otherwise mention in any detail any other type of
vehicle in any of his works, which has led many fans to speculate that perhaps this
brand of automobile was a personal favorite.
Asimov's wide interests included his participation in his later years in
organizations devoted to the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan and in The Wolfe
Pack , a group of devotees of the Nero Wolfe mysteries written by Rex Stout. He was
a prominent member of the Baker Street Irregulars, the leading Sherlock Holmes
society. From 1985 until his death in 1992, he was president of the American
Humanist Association; his successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut.
He was also a close friend of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and earned a
screen credit on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for advice he gave during production
(generally, confirming to Paramount Pictures that Roddenberry's ideas were
legitimate science-fictional extrapolation).
Asimov died on April 6, 1992. He was survived by his second wife, Janet, and his
children from his first marriage. Ten years after his death, Janet Asimov's edition
of Asimov's autobiography, It's Been a Good Life, revealed that his death was
caused by AIDS; he had contracted HIV from a blood transfusion received during a
heart bypass operation in December 1983. The specific cause of death was heart and
renal failure as complications of HIV infection. Janet Asimov wrote in the epilogue
of It's Been a Good Life that Asimov had wanted to "go public," but his doctors
convinced him to remain silent, warning that anti-AIDS prejudice would extend to
his family members. Asimov's family considered disclosing his condition after he
died, but the controversy which erupted when Arthur Ashe announced that he had AIDS
convinced them otherwise. Ten years later, after Asimov's doctors had died, Janet
and Robyn agreed that the AIDS story could be made public.
Isaac Asimov was a Humanist and a rationalist. He did not oppose religious
conviction in others, but he frequently railed against superstitious and
pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science.
During his childhood, his father and mother observed Orthodox Jewish traditions,
though not as stringently as they had in Petrovichi, but they did not force their
beliefs upon young Isaac. Thus he grew up without strong religious influences,
coming to believe that the Bible represented Hebrew mythology in the same way that
the Iliad recorded Greek mythology (for a brief while his father worked in the
local synagogue to enjoy the familiar surroundings and "shine as a learned scholar"
versed in the sacred writings. This experience had little effect upon Isaac beyond
teaching him the Hebrew alphabet). For many years, Asimov called himself an
atheist; however, he considered the term somewhat inadequate, as it described what
he did not believe rather than what he did. Eventually, he described himself as a
"humanist" and considered that term more practical.
In his last autobiography, Asimov wrote, "If I were not an atheist, I would believe
in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their
lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and
righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose
every deed is foul, foul, foul." The same memoir states his belief that Hell is
"the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even
human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered
Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term?
Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite
punishment. If an afterlife of just deserts existed, he claimed, the longest and
most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing
Hell". As his Treasury of Humor and Asimov Laughs Again record, he was willing to
tell jokes involving the Judeo-Christian God, Satan, the Garden of Eden, and other
religious topics, expressing the viewpoint that a good joke can do more to provoke
thought than hours of philosophical discussion.
Asimov became a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party during the New Deal
thereafter remained a political liberal. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War
in the 1960s and, in a television interview during the early 1970s, he publicly
endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy about what he considered an
"irrationalist" viewpoint taken by many liberal political activists from the late
1960s and onwards. In his autobiography In Joy Still Felt, he recalls meeting the
counterculture figure Abbie Hoffman; Asimov's impression was that the 1960s'
counterculture heroes had ridden an emotional wave which, in the end, left them
stranded in a "no-man's land of the spirit" from which he wondered if they would
ever return (this attitude is echoed by The Wave Speech in Hunter S. Thompson's
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). His defense of civil applications of nuclear power
even after the Three Mile Island incident damaged his relations with some of his
fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in Yours, Isaac Asimov, he states that
although he would prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear
reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on
Love Canal or near "a Union Carbide plant producing methyl isocyanate" (referring
to the Bhopal disaster). He issued many appeals for population control, reflecting
a perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.
Asimov considered himself a feminist even before Women's Liberation became a
widespread movement; he joked that he wished women to be free "because I hate it
when they charge". More seriously, he argued that the issue of women's rights was
closely connected to that of population control. Furthermore, he believed that
homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all
consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction (Yours, Isaac
Asimov).
In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of
life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by middle
class flight to the suburbs. His last non-fiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991,
co-written with his long-time friend science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals
with elements of the environmental crisis such as global warming and the
destruction of the ozone layer.
 Writing
Overview
Asimov's career can be divided into several time periods. His early career,
dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950.
This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun. He
began publishing nonfiction in 1952, co-authoring a college-level textbook called
Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Following the brief orbit of the first man-made
satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, his production of nonfiction, particularly
popular science books, greatly increased, with a consequent drop in his science
fiction output. Over the next quarter century, he wrote only four science fiction
novels. Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with
the publication of Foundation's Edge. From then until his death, Asimov published
several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a
way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are however
many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories.
Asimov believed that his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of
Robotics" and the Foundation Series (see Yours, Isaac Asimov, p. 329). Furthermore,
the Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing the words
positronic (an entirely fictional technology), psychohistory (frequently used in a
different sense than the imaginary one Asimov employed) and robotics into the
English language. Asimov coined the term robotics without suspecting that it might
be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of
mechanics, hydraulics, and so forth. (The original word robot derives from the
Czech word for "forced labor", robotovat, robota and was first employed by the
playwright Karel Čapek in R.U.R. .) Unlike his word psychohistory, the word
robotics continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition.
Star Trek: The Next Generation featured androids with "positronic brains", namely
Data, Lore, and B-4 , giving Asimov full credit for 'inventing' this fictional
technology. Ironically (or, given Asimov's sense of humor, perhaps not so
ironically), Asimov disliked the word "positron" as the term for the electron's
antiparticle. As he explained in the nonfiction work "Atom: Journey across the
Subatomic Cosmos," the proper suffix is "-on," as in proton and muon, not "-ron,"
as in electron and neutron, these two terms inheriting their r's from their root
words.
Science
fiction
Asimov first began reading the science fiction pulp magazines sold in his family's
confectionery store in 1929. He came into contact with science fiction fandom in
the mid-1930s, particularly the circle which became the Futurians. He began writing
his first science fiction story, "Cosmic Corkscrew", in 1937, but failed to finish
it until the spring of 1938, when he was inspired to do so after a visit to the
offices of Astounding Science Fiction. He finished "Cosmic Corkscrew" on 19 June,
and submitted the story in person to Astounding editor John W. Campbell two days
later. Campbell rejected "Cosmic Corkscrew", but encouraged Asimov to keep trying,
and Asimov did so. Asimov sold his third story, "Marooned Off Vesta", to Amazing
Stories magazine in October, and it appeared in the March 1939 issue. He continued
writing and sometimes selling stories to the science fiction pulps.
In 1941, he published his 32nd story, "Nightfall", which has been described as one
of "the most famous science-fiction stories of all time". In 1968 the Science
Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story
ever written. In his short story collection Nightfall and Other Stories he wrote,
"The writing of 'Nightfall' was a watershed in my professional career ... I was
suddenly taken seriously and the world of science fiction became aware that I
existed. As the years passed, in fact, it became evident that I had written a
'classic'".
"Nightfall" is an archetypical example of social science fiction, a term coined by
Asimov to describe a new trend in the 1940s, led by authors including Asimov and
Heinlein, away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human
condition.
By 1941 Asimov began selling regularly to Astounding, which was then the field's
leading magazine. From 1943 to 1949, all of his published science fiction appeared
in Astounding.
In 1942 he published the first of his Foundation stories—later collected in the
Foundation Trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second
Foundation (1953)—which recount the collapse and rebirth of a vast interstellar
empire in a universe of the future. Taken together, they are his most famous work
of science fiction, along with the Robot Series. Many years later, he continued the
series with Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986), and then went
back to before the original trilogy with Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward
the Foundation (1992). The series features his fictional science of Psychohistory
in which the future course of the history of large populations can be
predicted.
His positronic robot stories—many of which were collected in I, Robot (1950)—were
begun at about the same time. They promulgated a set of rules of ethics for robots
(see Three Laws of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other
writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. One such short story, "The
Bicentennial Man", was made into a film starring Robin Williams.
The 2004 film I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was based on a script by Jeff Vintar
entitled Hardwired, with Asimov's ideas incorporated later after acquiring the
rights to the I, Robot title. It is not related to the I, Robot script by Harlan
Ellison, who collaborated with Asimov himself to create a version that captured the
spirit of the original. Asimov is quoted as saying that Ellison's screenplay would
lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction movie ever
made". The screenplay was published in book form in 1994, after hopes of seeing it
in film form were becoming slim.
Besides movies, his Foundation and Robot stories have inspired other derivative
works of science fiction literature, many by well-known and established authors
such as Roger MacBride Allen, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford and David Brin. These
appear to have been done with the blessing, and often at the request of, Asimov's
widow Janet Asimov.
In 1948 he also wrote a spoof science article, "The Endochronic Properties of
Resublimated Thiotimoline". At the time, Asimov was preparing for his own doctoral
dissertation. Fearing a prejudicial reaction from his Ph.D. evaluation board, he
asked his editor that it be released under a pseudonym, yet it appeared under his
own name. During his oral examination shortly thereafter, Asimov grew concerned at
the scrutiny he received. At the end of the examination, one evaluator turned to
him, smiling, and said "Mr. Asimov, tell us something about the thermodynamic
properties of the compound thiotimoline". After a 20-minute wait, he was summoned
back into the Examination Room and congratulated as "Dr. Asimov."
In 1949, book publisher Doubleday's science fiction editor Walter I. Bradbury
accepted Asimov's unpublished novel "Grow Old Along With Me" for publication, and
it appeared under the Doubleday imprint in January 1950 as Pebble in the Sky.
Doubleday went on to publish four more original science fiction novels by Asimov in
the 1950s, along with the six juvenile Lucky Starr novels under the pseudonym Paul
French. Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning
with The Martian Way and Other Stories in 1955. The early 1950s also saw Gnome
Press publish Asimov's positronic robot stories as I, Robot and his Foundation
stories as the three books of the Foundation Trilogy.
When new science fiction magazines, notably Galaxy Magazine and The Magazine of
Fantasy & Science Fiction, appeared in the 1950s, Asimov began publishing short
stories in them as well. He would later refer to the 1950s as his "golden decade".
A number of these stories are included in his Best of anthology, including "The
Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to cope with and potentially
reverse the process of entropy. It was his personal favorite and considered by many
to be equal to "Nightfall". Asimov wrote of it in 1973:
Why is it my favorite? For one thing I got the idea all at once and didn't have to
fiddle with it; and I wrote it in white-heat and scarcely had to change a word.
This sort of thing endears any story to any writer.
Then, too, it has had the strangest effect on my readers. Frequently someone writes
to ask me if I can give them the name of a story, which they think I may have
written, and tell them where to find it. They don't remember the title but when
they describe the story it is invariably "The Last Question". This has reached the
point where I recently received a long-distance phone call from a desperate man who
began, "Dr. Asimov, there's a story I think you wrote, whose title I can't
remember—" at which point I interrupted to tell him it was "The Last Question" and
when I described the plot it proved to be indeed the story he was after. I left him
convinced I could read minds at a distance of a thousand miles.
In December 1974, the former Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him
if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had
a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film
about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of
extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by
McCartney's group Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea,
although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a
"treatment" or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea,
producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic. However, he did not make use
of McCartney's brief scrap of dialogue, and probably in consequence, McCartney
rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in Boston University's
archives.
Beginning in 1977, he lent his name to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (now
Asimov's Science Fiction) and penned an editorial for each issue. There was also a
short-lived Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine and a companion Asimov's Science Fiction
Anthology reprint series, published as magazines (in the same manner as stablemates
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine's
"anthologies").
Popular
science
During the late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov shifted gears somewhat, and substantially
decreased his fiction output (he published only four adult novels between 1957's
The Naked Sun and 1982's Foundation's Edge, two of which were mysteries). At the
same time, he greatly increased his non-fiction production, writing mostly on
science topics; the launch of Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over a
"science gap", which Asimov's publishers were eager to fill with as much material
as he could write.
Meanwhile, the monthly Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction invited him to
continue his regular non-fiction column, begun in the now-folded bimonthly
companion magazine Venture Science Fiction Magazine, ostensibly dedicated to
popular science, but with Asimov having complete editorial freedom. The first of
the F&SF columns appeared in November of 1958, and they followed uninterrupted
thereafter, with 399 entries, until Asimov's terminal illness. These columns,
periodically collected into books by his principal publisher, Doubleday, helped
make Asimov's reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science, and were referred to by
him as his only pop-science writing in which he never had to assume complete
ignorance of the subjects at hand on the part of his readers. The popularity of his
first wide-ranging reference work, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science, also
allowed him to give up most of his academic responsibilities and become essentially
a full-time freelance writer.
Asimov wrote several essays on the social contentions of his time, including
"Thinking About Thinking" and "Science: Knock Plastic" (1967).
The great variety of information covered in Asimov's writings once prompted Kurt
Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he only
knew how it felt to have the reputation of omniscience—"Uneasy". (See In Joy Still
Felt, chapter 30.) In the introduction to his story collection Slow Learner, Thomas
Pynchon admitted that he relied upon Asimov's science popularizations (and the
Oxford English Dictionary) to provide his knowledge of entropy.
It is a mark of the friendship and respect accorded Asimov by Arthur C. Clarke that
the so-called "Asimov-Clarke Treaty of Park Avenue", put together as they shared a
cab ride along Park Avenue in New York, stated that Asimov was required to insist
that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second best
for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science
writer in the world (reserving second best for himself). Thus the dedication in
Clarke's book Report on Planet Three (1972) reads: "In accordance with the terms of
the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the
second-best science-fiction writer."
Other
writing
In addition to his interest in science, Asimov was also greatly interested in
history. Starting in the 1960s, he wrote 14 popular history books, most notably The
Greeks: A Great Adventure (1965), The Roman Republic (1966), The Roman Empire
(1967), The Egyptians (1967) and The Near East: 10,000 Years of History (1968).
He published Asimov's Guide to the Bible in two volumes— covering the Old Testament
in 1967 and the New Testament in 1969— and then combined them into one 1,300-page
volume in 1981. Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of
the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences
that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important
characters. His interest in literature manifested itself in several annotations of
literary works, including Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970), Asimov's Annotated
Paradise Lost (1974), and The Annotated Gulliver's Travels (1980).
Never entirely lacking wit and humor, towards the end of his life Asimov published
a series of collections of limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with
Lecherous Limericks, which appeared in 1975. Limericks: Too Gross, whose title
displays Asimov's love of puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov and an equal
number by John Ciardi. He even created a slim volume of Sherlockian limericks (and
embarrassed one fan by autographing her copy with an impromptu limerick that rhymed
'Nancy' with 'romancy'). Asimov's best attempt at Yiddish humor is found in Azazel,
The Two Centimeter Demon in which the two characters, both Jewish, talk over
dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, the anecdotes of "George" and his friend Azazel.
Asimov's Treasury of Humor is both a working joke book and a treatise propounding
his views on humor theory. According to Asimov, the most essential element of humor
is an abrupt change in point of view, one that suddenly shifts focus from the
important to the trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of
himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual
guidebooks such as The Sensuous Woman (by "J") and The Sensuous Man (by "M"),
Asimov published The Sensuous Dirty Old Man under the byline "Dr. 'A'", but with
his full name prominently displayed on the cover.
Asimov published two volumes of autobiography: In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In
Joy Still Felt (1980). A third autobiography, I. Asimov: A Memoir, was published in
April 1994. The epilogue was written by his widow Janet Asimov a decade after his
death. It's Been a Good Life (2002), edited by Janet, is a condensed version of his
three autobiographies. He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his
writing, Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984).
Asimov and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship
during Star Trek's initial launch in the late 60s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on
Star Trek's scientific accuracy for TV Guide magazine. Roddenberry retorted
respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when
writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to TV
Guide claiming despite its inaccuracies, that Star Trek was a fresh and
intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained
friends to the point where Asimov even served as an advisor on a number of Star
Trek projects.
Literary
themes
Much of Asimov's fiction dealt with themes of paternalism. His first robot story,
"Robbie", concerned a robotic nanny. "Lenny" deals with the capacity of
robopsychologist Susan Calvin to feel maternal love towards a robot whose
positronic brain capacities are those of a 3-year-old. As the robots grew more
sophisticated, their interventions became more wide-reaching and subtle. In
"Evidence", the story revolves around a candidate who successfully runs for office
who may be a robot masquerading as a human. In "The Evitable Conflict", the robots
run humanity from behind the scenes, acting as nannies to the whole species.
Later, in The Robots of Dawn and Robots and Empire, a robot develops what he calls
the Zeroth Law of Robotics, which states that: "A robot may not injure humanity,
nor, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm". He also decides that
robotic presence is stifling humanity's freedom, and that the best course of action
is for the robots to phase themselves out. A non-robot, time travel novel, The End
of Eternity, features a similar conflict and resolution. The significance of the
Zeroth Law is that it outweighs and supersedes all other Laws of Robotics: if a
robot finds himself in a situation whereby he must murder one or more humans (a
direct violation of the First Law of Robotics) in order to protect all of humanity
(and preserve the Zeroth Law), then the robot's positronic programming will require
him to commit murder for humanity's sake. Only highly advanced robots (such as
Daneel and Giskard) could comprehend this law.
In The Foundation Series (which did not originally have robots), a scientist
implements a semi-secret plan to create a new galactic empire over the course of
1,000 years. This series has its version of Platonic guardians, called the Second
Foundation, to perfect and protect the plan. When Asimov stopped writing the series
in the 1950s, the Second Foundation was depicted as benign protectors of humanity.
When he revisited the series in the 1980s, he made the paternalistic themes even
more explicit.
Foundation's Edge introduced the planet Gaia, obviously based on the Gaia
hypothesis. Every animal, plant, and mineral on Gaia participated in a shared
consciousness, forming a single super-mind working together for the greater good.
In Foundation and Earth, the protagonist starts searching for the Earth, thinking
that there he could find the answer of why he decided, in Foundation's Edge, that
Galaxia was the right choice to take. Gaia is one of Asimov's best attempts at
exploring the possibility of a collective awareness, and is compounded further in
Nemesis, in which the planet Erythro composed primarily of prokaryotic life has a
mind of its own and seeks communion with human beings.
Foundation and Earth introduces robots to the Foundation universe. Two of Asimov's
last novels, Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation, explore their
behavior in fuller detail. The robots are depicted as covert operatives, acting for
the benefit of humanity.
Another frequent theme, perhaps the reverse of paternalism, is social oppression.
The Currents of Space takes place on a planet where a unique plant fiber is grown;
the agricultural workers there are exploited by the aristocrats of a nearby planet.
In The Stars, Like Dust, the hero helps a planet that is oppressed by an arrogant
interplanetary empire, the Tyranni.
Often the victims of oppression are either Earth people (as opposed to colonists on
other planets) or robots. In "The Bicentennial Man", a robot fights prejudice to be
accepted as a human. In The Caves of Steel, the people of Earth resent the
wealthier "Spacers" and in turn treat robots (associated with the Spacers) in ways
reminiscent of how whites treated blacks, such as addressing robots as "boy".
Pebble in the Sky shows an analogous situation: the Galactic Empire rules Earth and
its people use such terms as "Earthie-squaw", but Earth is a theocratic
dictatorship that enforces euthanasia of anyone older than 60. One hero is Bel
Arvardan, an upper-class Galactic archaeologist who must overcome his prejudices.
The other is Joseph Schwartz, a 62-year-old 20th century American who had emigrated
from Europe, where his people were persecuted (he is quite possibly Jewish), and is
accidentally transported forward in time to Arvardan's period. He must decide
whether to help a downtrodden society that thinks he should be dead.
Yet another frequent theme in Asimov is rational thought. He invented the
science-fiction mystery with the novel The Caves of Steel and the stories in
Asimov's Mysteries, usually playing fair with the reader by introducing early in
the story any science or technology involved in the solution. Later, he produced
non-SF mysteries, including the novel Murder at the ABA (1976) and the "Black
Widowers" and "Union Club" short stories, in which he followed the same rule. In
his fiction, important scenes are often essentially debates, with the more
rational, humane—or persuasive—side winning.
Awards
1957 Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award, for Building Blocks of the Universe
1960 Howard W. Blakeslee Award from the American Heart Association for The Living
River
1962 Boston University's Publication Merit Award
1963 special Hugo Award for "adding science to science fiction" for essays
published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
1965 James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society (now called the James T.
Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry)
1966 Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award for the Foundation series
1967 Westinghouse Science Writing Award
1973 Hugo Award
1973 Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1977 Hugo Award
1977 Nebula Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
In 1981 an asteroid, 5020 Asimov, was named in his honor
1987 Nebula Grandmaster award, a lifetime achievement award
1983 Hugo Award for Best Novel for Foundation's Edge
1992 Hugo Award for Best Novelette for Gold
1995 Hugo Award for Best Nonfiction for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1996 -- A 1946 Retro-Hugo for Best Novel of 1945 was given at the 1996 WorldCon to
The Mule, the 7th Foundation story published in Astounding Science Fiction
14 honorary doctorate degrees from various universities
1997 posthumous induction into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame
Source : Some of the information on
this page came from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU
Documentation License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Isaac
Asimov - Projector - Biography
