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Isaac Asimov

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Isaac Asimov

Other literary forms

Isaac Asimov (AZ-eh-mof) was an unusually prolific author with more than five hundred published books in

his bibliography, including fiction, autobiographies, edited anthologies of fiction, and nonfiction works

ranging in subject from the Bible to science, history, and humor; only his most famous major novels are listed

above. His series of juvenile science-fiction novels about the character Lucky Starr first appeared under the

pseudonym Paul French. Asimov also regularly wrote articles on science and literature, and he lent his name

to a science-fiction magazine for which he wrote a monthly article. The magazine has continued in publication

since Asimovs death.

Isaac Asimov.

Asimov wrote three autobiographies: Before the Golden Age (1974); In Memory Yet Green (1979), which

covers his life from 1920 to 1954; and In Joy Still Felt(1980), which continues from 1954 to 1978. In I.

Asimov: A Memoir(1994), he addresses the events of his life in more anecdotal form. Yours, Isaac Asimov: A

Lifetime of Letters (1995) is a posthumous collection of excerpts from letters written by Asimov, edited by his

brother Stanley Asimov. In 2002, Asimovs wife, Janet Jeppson Asimov, published an edited condensation of

Asimovs three autobiographies titled Its Been a Good Life. This consolidation includes the short story

The Last Question, personal letters to the editor, and an epilogue by Jeppson giving details on Asimovs

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illness and death.

Achievements

Isaac Asimov was widely known as one of the big three science-fiction writers, the other two being Robert

A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. In addition to obtaining a doctorate in biochemistry from Columbia

University, Asimov was awarded fourteen honorary doctoral degrees from various universities. He won sevenHugo Awards (for achievements in science fiction) in various categories. He was awarded the Nebula Award

(awarded by the Science Fiction Writers of America) in 1972 for The Gods Themselves and again in 1977 for

the novelette The Bicentennial Man (later expanded by Robert Silverberg to The Positronic Man). In 1987,

Asimov received the Nebula Grand Master Award, the eighth to be given; all seven of the previous awards

had been given to science-fiction authors who were still living and had begun publication before Asimov.

Earlier, the American Chemical Society had given Asimov the James T. Grady Award in 1965, and he

received the Westinghouse Science Writing Award in 1967. Asimov wrote on a huge number of subjects, and

he has at least one book numbered in each of the ten Dewey Decimal Library Systems major classifications.

BiographyIsaac Asimov emigrated to the United States with his Russian Jewish parents when he was three years old;

they settled in Brooklyn, New York. Unsure of his actual birthday, due to poor record keeping in Russia at the

time, he claimed January 2, 1920. Encountering early science-fiction magazines at his fathers candy store,

where he began working when his mother was pregnant with his brother, led him to follow dual careers as

scientist and author. Asimov was the eldest of three children; he had a sister, Marcia, and a brother, Stanley.

He considered himself an American and never learned to speak Russian; in later life he studied Hebrew and

Yiddish. In high school, Asimov wrote a regular column for his schools newspaper. He entered Columbia

University at age fifteen, and by age eighteen, he sold his first story to the magazine Amazing Stories.

Graduating from Columbia with a B.S. in chemistry in 1939, Asimov applied to all five New York City

medical schools and was turned down. He was also rejected for the masters program at Columbia but

convinced the department to accept him on probation. He earned his masters degree in chemistry in 1941.

His doctoral program was interrupted by his service in World War II as a junior chemist at the Philadelphia

Naval Yard from 1942 through 1945. He worked there with fellow science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein.

Asimov earned his doctorate in biochemistry in 1948, and after graduation he worked for a year as a

researcher at Columbia before becoming an instructor at Boston University School of Medicine. He was

granted tenure there in 1955, but he gave up his duties to write full time, while retaining his title. The

university promoted him to the rank of full professor in 1979.

Asimov married Gertrude Blugerman in July of 1942. They had two children, a son named David and a

daughter named Robyn Joan. They were divorced on November 16, 1973, and Asimov married Janet OpalJeppson fifteen days later. They had no children, but they wrote the Norby robot childrens books together.

Asimov was afraid of heights and flew in airplanes only twice in his life. On the other hand, he enjoyed

closed-in places, and he thought that the city he describes in his bookThe Caves of Steel would be a very

appealing place to live. Asimov was not religious but was proud of his Jewish ethnic heritage. He enjoyed

public speaking almost as much as he enjoyed writing and had an exuberant personality. He died in New York

City on April 6, 1992, at the age of seventy-two.

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Analysis

Isaac Asimov was especially known for his ability to explain complicated scientific concepts clearly.

Although his reputation as a writer is based primarily on his science fiction, his nonfiction writings are useful

reference works on the many subjects he covered. His goal was not only to entertain but also to inform.

Most of Asimovs novels are science fiction, and, of these, fourteen novels are tied together at some pointwith part of the Foundation series. Early in his writing career Asimov established four series of stories: the

Empire series, consisting of three novels and collections of short stories; the Foundation series, consisting of

seven novels, with more that Asimov outlined to be finished by other authors; the Robot series, consisting of

four novels and collections of short stories; and the Lucky Starr series, a collection of six works for children

not related to the Foundation series. Asimov borrowed heavily from history, specifically the history of the

Roman Empire, to create his plot lines for the Foundation books. Of all his novels, The Gods Themselves, a

Hugo and Nebula Award winner, was Asimovs favorite.

Empire series

The Empire series consists of three novels, Pebble in the Sky, The Stars Like Dust, and The Currents of Space.

Later Foundation series books attempt to tie these three into that series. Asimovs first published novel,

Pebble in the Sky, is the best of these. The writing is not Asimovs most polished, but the hero, Joseph

Schwartz, provides an interesting middle-aged counterpoint to Bel Arvardan, a younger man of action coping

with a postapocalyptic, radioactive Earth.

Foundation series

The Foundation series began as a trilogy. The first three Foundation books, known for some time as the

Foundation trilogy, were written in the 1950s and took much of their plot lines from the history of the

Roman Empire. Because of the length of the trilogy, it is rarely taught in schools, but the first two of the three

books, Foundation and Foundation and Empire, are examples of Asimovs fiction at its best.

The hero of these novels is Hari Seldon, a mathematician who invents the discipline of psychohistory. Using

psychohistory, Seldon is able to predict the coming fall of the empire and to help set up the Foundation in

order to help humankind move more quickly through the coming dark ages that will be caused by the

collapse of the empire. Psychohistory is unable to predict individual mutations and events in human history,

however, so Seldons Foundation is unable to predict the rise of the Mule, a mutant of superior intelligence,

to the position of galactic overlord. Asimovs introduction of the concept of psychohistory, a science that

could predict the future course of humankind, has inspired many scholars of history, psychology, sociology,

and economics and was significant in the creation of an actual psychohistory major at some colleges and

universities.

By the third book, Second Foundation, Asimov was tired of the Foundation story and came up with two

alternate endings that he hoped would let him be free of it. In the first, the Mule discovers the secret second

Foundation and destroys it, thereby ending Seldons plan. Asimovs editor talked him out of this ending, so

he wrote another, in which the Second Foundation triumphs. Seldons plan is restored to course and nothing

of interest happens again to the human speciesthus freeing Asimov from the need to write further Foundation

novels. Time and financial incentives eventually overcame Asimovs boredom with the Foundation trilogy,

however, and thirty years later, in the 1980s and 1990s, he began filling in the gaps around the original

stories with other novels. He went on to produce Foundations Edge, Foundation and Earth, Prelude to

Foundation, and Forward the Foundation. None of these has quite the same magic as the first two Foundation

novels.

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Robot series

The ideas introduced by Asimov in the Robot series are perhaps his most famous. Asimovs robots are human

in form and have positronic brains. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the television program Star Trek: The

Next Generation and the feature films based on it contributed to public awareness of this concept through the

character of the android Data, who, like Asimovs robots, has a positronic brain. Asimov also invented the

three Laws of Robotics, which he tended not to let other people use. His invention of mechanical creatureswith built-in ethical systems is used freely, however, and from that standpoint Data is an Asimovian robot.

The concept of a tool designed for safety in the form of a robot was new to science-fiction writing when

Asimov introduced it, and it stood in sharp contrast to the usual mechanical men of science-fiction pulp

magazines, which tended to run amok in dangerous fashion.

Exciting ideas and parts are to be found in each of the four Robot novels, The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun,

The Robots of Dawn, and Robots and Empire. The Caves of Steel is a good place to start. The character R.

Daneel Olivaw is introduced in this novel and appears in six additional novels. The R. in his name stands

for robot. This particular novel is also notable for its blending of two genres, science fiction and mystery.

Additionally, the title describes Asimovs solution to an overcrowded Earth, an incredible complex of

multilayered megacities covering the entire planet.

Another part of the Robot series is Asimovs short-story collection I, Robot. This work lent its title and

character names to a motion picture released in 2004. The 1999 film Bicentennial Man is also based on

Asimovs Robot series.

Lucky Starr series

Because he was intentionally writing the Lucky Starr juvenile novels for a hoped-for television series and was

afraid that they would affect his reputation as a serious science-fiction writer, Asimov originally published

them under the pseudonym Paul French. In these novels, David Starr and his friend Bigman Jones travel

around the solar system in a spaceship. Asimov adapted the stereotypes of the Western genre to create thebooks plots, but he used his amazing ability to explain science to create plot devices and solutions based on

science.

The Gods Themselves

The Gods Themselves is one of Asimovs best novels and one of the few unrelated to any others. To single it

out as a stand-alone work, however, would be to imply that the books of his series are dependent upon one

another, which is not true. The Gods Themselves is one of the few Asimov novels dealing with aliens.

The Gods Themselves (the title is taken from a quote by German dramatist Friedrich Schiller, Against

stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain) is actually a series of three interrelated stories treatingstupidity and responses to it. Humans exchange energy with aliens in a parallel universe with the

Inter-Universe Electron Pump. When one human realizes the pump will eventually cause the sun to explode,

he works to warn others, but nobody listens. Meanwhile, in the parallel universe, one of the para-men also

attempts to shut down the pump. Although neither succeeds, owing to stupidity on the part of his peers, the

problem eventually is solved by others in one of the parallel universes, and the human universe is saved.

Mysteries

Another fiction genre in which Asimov enjoyed writing was the mystery. He published ten mystery

short-story collections and the novel Murder at the ABA: A Puzzle in Four Days and Sixty Scenes. This novel

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is a roman clef, as the main character is Asimovs friend and fellow science-fiction writer Harlan Ellison, as

portrayed by the character Darius Just (pronounced dar-I-us, to rhyme with bias). Asimov appears in the

novel, and it includes footnoted comments by both Asimov and Darius Just. The action takes place at the hotel

where the American Booksellers Associations annual convention is being held. During the convention,

Darius Justs protg, Giles Devore, is found dead in the bathtub of his hotel room. The police treat the death

as an accident, but certain factors about the state of the hotel room make Darius suspect that it is murder.

Darius sets out to prove that it is indeed murder, and along the way he has a couple of sexual interludes, one

with a friend from the book-publishing world and another with an attractive hotel liaison. Several of the key

conversations leading up to the death of Giles Devore occur during meals eaten at social events during the

convention. In order to prove that Giles has been murdered, Darius interviews everyone who has worked with

Giles during the twenty-four hours preceding his death. He discovers during this process that Giles indulged

in an unusual sexual practice in addition to his compulsive behavior regarding pens and clothing.

Asimovs mysteries, like his other fiction work, tend to focus on the cleverness of situations or on science

rather than on any deep individual characterization. The Black Widowers collections of short stories, such as

Tales of the Black Widowers (1974) and Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), like Murder at the ABA,

follow the roman clef style; they are based on the monthly meetings during which Asimov and his friends

would have dinner and discuss science, writing, history, and world events.

Novelettes

As a publishing ploy, it was arranged that science-fiction novelist Robert Silverberg would expand three of

Asimovs best and most famous novelettesNightfall, The Bicentennial Man (which became The Positronic

Man), and The Ugly Little Boyinto full novels. Although Silverberg is an excellent and literary writer, his

style and Asimovs do not blend particularly well. Given the opportunity, readers would be well served by

reading the original award-winning works. The original version ofNightfall, in particular, has won worldwide

acclaim and is the most mentioned and remembered of Asimovs novelettes. Its premise concerns what

happens to the psyches of a people who live in a world that experiences total darkness only once every two

thousand years.

The original novelette Nightfall has twice been the basis for motion pictures; the first film adaptation, titled

Nightfall, was released in 1988 (retitled Isaac Asimovs Nightfall for a video release in 2000), and the second,

which retained the underlying science concept of Asimovs work, was released in 2000 as Pitch Black.

Nightfall tells the story of a world in a solar system with six suns. Because the suns never set, it has been

daylight on the planet for more than two thousand years. The work presents a sociological exploration of the

reactions of the inhabitants of this world when a total eclipse of the suns occurs and they are thrown into

darkness for the first time in one hundred generations.

Bibliography

Asimov, Isaac. Asimovs Galaxy. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1989. Compilation of sixty-six essays

presents readers with Asimovs unique perspective on a genre to which he made many important

contributions. Topics addressed include religion and science fiction, women and science fiction, time travel,

science-fiction editors, and magazine covers. Particularly interesting are the items in the final section,

Science Fiction and I, in which Asimov writes frankly about his life and work.

A Celebration of Isaac Asimov: A Man for the Universe. Skeptical Inquirer17 (Fall, 1992): 30-47. Praises

Asimov as a master science educator, perhaps the best of all time, given that he was responsible for teaching

science to millions of people. Includes tributes from Arthur C. Clarke, Frederik Pohl, Harlan Ellison, L.

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Sprague de Camp, Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Martin Gardner, Paul Kurtz, Donald Goldsmith, James

Randi, and E. C. Krupp.

Chambers, Bette. Isaac Asimov: A One-Man Renaissance. Humanist53 (March/April, 1993): 6-8.

Discusses Asimovs stature as a humanist and his presidency of the American Humanist Association. Also

addresses Asimovs support for the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal

and his thoughts on censorship and creationism, pseudoscience, and scientific orthodoxy.

Fiedler, Jean, and Jim Mele. Isaac Asimov. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1982. Brief volume serves as a

primer on Asimovs work as a science-fiction writer. Provides descriptions of most of his writings in the

genre, including the Foundation trilogy, the Robot series, and the juvenile books. Provides a clear and

nonacademic treatment of Asimovs major works in addition to giving some of his less well-known works

long-overdue recognition. Includes notes, bibliography, and index.

Freedman, Carl, ed. Conversations with Isaac Asimov. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005.

Collection of interviews with the author spans the period from 1968 to 1990. Asimov discusses such topics as

the state of science-fiction writing and his own opinions about his classic novels. Includes chronology, list of

Asimovs books, and index.

Gunn, James. Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction. Rev. ed. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press,

1996. Gunn, a professor of English, science-fiction writer, historian and critic of the genre, and longtime

friend of Asimov, shows how science fiction shaped Asimovs life and how he in turn shaped the field.

Presents painstaking analyses of Asimovs entire science-fiction corpus. Includes a chronology, a checklist of

works by Asimov, a select list of works about him, and an index.

Hutcheon, Pat Duffy. The Legacy of Isaac Asimov. Humanist53 (March/April, 1993): 3-5. Biographical

account discusses Asimovs efforts to encourage an understanding of science and his desire to make people

realize that to study humanity is to study the universe, and vice versa. Asserts that Asimov saw the possibility

of an eventual organization of a world government and predicted the end of sexism, racism, and war.

Palumbo, Donald. Chaos Theory, Asimovs Foundations and Robots, and Herberts Dune: The Fractal

Aesthetic of Epic Science Fiction. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. Looks at the history of epic

science fiction through its two most outstanding examples. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Touponce, William F. Isaac Asimov. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Offers a good introduction to the life and works

of the author. Includes bibliographical references and index.

White, Michael. Asimov: A Life of the Grand Master of Science Fiction. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1994.

First full-length biography of the author provides a detailed look at his life and work. Includes a general

bibliography, a bibliography of Asimovs fiction, a chronological list of his books, and an index.

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