Dr. Isaac Asimov (c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992, Russian Ð?йзек Ð?зимов IPA: ) was the Russian-born American author and biochemist, a extremely successful & exceptionally prolific writer better known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov's best known function is the Foundation Series, which he later combined by having deuce of his more series, a Galactic Empire Series and Robot series. He too wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as a nifty total of non-nonfictional prose. Asimov wrote or even even edited concluded D volumes & an judged 90,000 letters or postcards, and he has works within each major category of the Dewey Decimal System except Philosophy. Asimov was by general consensus an expert of the science-fiction genre &, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, was considered to be one of the "Big Three" science-fiction writers during his lifetime.

Asimov was an extended-instance member of Mensa, albeit reluctantly — he described them when "intellectually combative." A asteroid 5020 Asimov is named around his honor.

Biography

Asimov was born about January 2, 1920 (his date of birth for official purposes—the accurate date is non certainside) in Petrovichi shtetl of Smolensk Oblast, RSFSR (now Russia) to Annthe Rachel Berman Asimov and Judah Asimov, a Jewish family of millers. It emigrated to the United States when he was three years old; since a parents universally spoke Yiddish and English with little Isaac, he never learned Russian. Growing higher inside Brooklyn, New York, he taught himself to read at a age of 5, & remained fluent within Yiddish too when English. His parents owned the confectionery & everyone within the personal was potential to function in it. He saw science fiction magazines in the store & began reading the babies. Inside his mid-teens, he began to write his have stories & before long was selling the two to pulp magazines.

He graduated from either Columbia University in 1939 and took a Ph.D. in chemistry there in 1948. Around between, he spent tierce years in the period of World War II working at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station. When a 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 Corporal on the basis of his typewriting skills & narrowly avoided participating in the 1946 atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. When gaining his doctor's degree, he joined a faculty of Boston University, with which he remained associated thenceforth, however around the non-teaching capacity. the university ceased to pay him a remuneration around 1958, by which time his income from either either writing already exceeded his income from his academic duties. Asimov remained on the faculty as an associate professor, being promoted around 1979 to full professor, & his home papers from either 1965 onward are archived at Boston University's Mugar Memorial Library, where it consume 464 boxes in 71 meters of shelf space. Within 1985, he became President of the American Humanist Association and remained inside that position until his dying in 1992; his successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

He married Gertrude Blugerman in July 26, 1942, with whom he experienced 2 youngsters, David (b. 1951) and Robyn Joan (b. 1955). When a long separation, it were divorced inside 1973, and Asimov married Janet O. Jeppson later that year.

Asimov was the claustrophile; that is, he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces. Around his foremost volume of autobiography, he recalls the childhood want to have the magazine substitute the New York City Subway station, within which he imagined he may enclose himself & listen to the rumble of passing trains.

Asimov was afraid of flying, only doing therefore twice withwithin his entire life (once in a course of his work on a Naval Air Experimental Station in Philadelphia during a 2nd Globe War & another time giving front yard from either the army base witharound Oahu in 1946). He rarely traveled wonderful distances, partially because his aversion to aircraft mass produced a logistics of long-few feet away travel highly complicated. Around his down the road years, he noticed he enjoyed traveling in cruise ships, and in many occasions he became a share of the sail' "entertainment", generating science-themed talks in ships such as a RMS Queen Elizabeth 2.

His physical manual dexterity was super unfortunate. He never learned training swim or even ride the bicycle, although he did learn to cause the car & detected he enjoyed it. He did non view to work the car until fallowing he moved to Boston, Massachusetts; in his jokebook Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston camping when "anarchy on wheels".

Asimov died in April 6, 1992. He was survived by his 2nd married woman, Janet, & his youngsters from either his number one marriage. Ten years fallowing his demise, Janet Asimov's edition of Isaac's autobiography, ''It's Been a Good Life'', revealed that his death was caused by AIDS; he had contracted HIV from an infected blood transfusion during heart bypass surgery in 1983. A actual stimulate of dying wwhen heart & kidney failure as complications of Helps. Janet Asimov claims that Isaac's doctors encouraged a babies does'nt to reveal his unwellness, when the doctors claim it was Janet herself world health organization wanted to keep it secret (look at [http://www.locusmag.com/2002/Issue04/Letter.html]).

Intellectual positions

Isaac Asimov was the humanist and a rationalist. He did non oppose echt religious conviction within others however was against superstitious or unfounded beliefs.

Asimov was the progressive on most political issues, and the stanch supporter of the Democratic Party. Inside the television locate in the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy at what he saw as an irrationalist track taken by several progressive political militant from either a late 1960s onwards. His defense of civil applications of nuclear power even after a Three Mile Island incident damaged his relations with a few on the left. He issued several appeals for population control reflecting the perspective articulated by humans from either Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich. within a closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York on the shrinking tax base caused by middle class flight to the suburbs. His survive non-nonfictional prose book, My Angry Globe (1991, co-written with science fiction creator Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as global warming and the destruction of the ozone layer.

Asimov's writing career
Overview

Asimov's career may be divided into many period. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began by using short stories inside 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until astir 1958, all but ending when publication of The Naked Sun. He began publishing nonfictional prose around 1952, co-authoring a college-level schoolbook known as Biochemistry & Man Metabolism. Ensuing a brief orbit of the foremost human-semisynthetic satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, his production of nonfiction, particularly popular science books, greatly increased, by using the resultant come by his science fiction output. Across a next quarter century, he would write single quaternity science fiction novels. Starting inside 1982, a 2nd half of his science fiction career began by owning the publication of ''Foundation's Edge. From either so until his demise, Asimov would publish many sequels & prequels to his existent novels, ligature the children together around how else he got non originally anticipated.

Within his have review, Asimov believed that his virtually all enduring contributions would become his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation Series (see Yours, Isaac Asimov, p. 329). Moreover, a Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing the words positronic (an entirely fancied technology), psychohistory (frequently used within a different feel than the fanciful 1 Asimov listed) & robotics into the English language. Asimov coined a term robotics while forgoing suspecting that it will exist as an original word; at a period, he believed it was just a natural parallel of mechanics, hydraulics and so forth. (A original word golem derives from either a Czech word for "forced labor", robota, and was number one listed per dramatist Karel Capek.) Unlike his other ii coinages, a word robotics'' continues inside mainstream & technical indicator have by owning Asimov's original definition.

Science fiction

Asimov began contributing stories to science fiction magazines around 1939, "Marooned Off Vesta" being his first promulgated story, written whenever he was Eighteen. Two and a half years late, he published his 32nd short story, "Nightfall" (1941), which has been described as one of "the most famous science-fiction stories of all time" [http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue8/asimov.html]. Within 1968 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" a better science fiction short story ever written [http://www.rudysbooks.com/asimovobit.html]. Inside his short anthology Nightfall & More 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 prototypical lesson of social science fiction, the term coined by Asimov to describe a newly trend in the 1940's, led by authors including Asimov and Heinlein, away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition.

Within 1942 he began his Foundation stories—later collected in the Foundation Trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953)—which recount the collapse & rebirth of the immense interstellar empire in a universe of the future. Taken together, it is his best known operate of science fiction, along sustaining a Robot Series. Numbers of years late, he continued a series by using ''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). A series features his invented science of Psychohistory in which the first course of the history of big populations may be predicted.

His robot stories—many of which were collected inside I, Robot (1950)—were begun at about a equivalent instance. It promulgated the placed of system of ethics for robots (look at Three Laws of Robotics) & intelligent machines that greatly influenced more writers and thinkers in their coarse of action of the subject. Of these such short story, "The Bicentennial Man", was made into the movie starring Robin Williams.

A recent film I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was based on a Hardwired'' script by Jeff Vintar with Asimov's ideas incorporated later fallowing getting a rights to the I personally, Golem title. These are non related the I personally, Golem script by Harlan Ellison, who collaborated by having Asimov himself to produce a version that captured the spirit of the original. Asimov is quoted when saying that Ellison's screenplay would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction movie ever made". A screenplay was published around book form around 1994, fallowing hopes of seeing it around film form were becoming melt off. Watch: I, Robot, [http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/bottom/56.html]

Besides moving-picture show, his Foundation and robot stories have inspired more derivative works of science fiction literature, numerous by easily-known & constituted authors like Roger MacBride Allen, Greg Bear, and David Brin. These pop up to develop been done using a blessing, & typically at a asking of, Asimov's widow woman Janet Asimov.

Inside 1948 he also wrote the spoof science article, "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". At a period, Asimov was preparing for his have doctorial thesis. Fearing the prejudicious reaction from either his Ph.D. evaluation board, he asked his editor that it exist as freed under the anonym, eventually it appeared under his have title. In a period of his oral examination shortly thenceforth, Asimov grew caring at the scrutiny he received. At a prevent of the examination, a single judge turned to him, smiling, & said "Mr. Asimov, tell us something about the thermodynamic properties of the compound thiotimoline." When a twenty-microscopic hold off, he wwhen summoned back into the Examination Room & congratulated as "Dr. Asimov."

He continued writing short stories for science fiction magazines in the 1950s, which he referred to as his golden decade. The total one come involved inside his Best of anthology, including "The Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to meet & reverse entropy. It was his home preferred & considered by numbers of to exist as the competition to "Nightfall". Asimov wrote of it inside 1973, Beginning around 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 too the short-transient Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine & the companion Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology reprint series, published when magazines (in the equivalent manner when stable companion Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine'''s "anthologies").

Popular science

When you took a late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov shifted gears somewhat, and substantially decreased his fiction output (he published simply little joe full-grown novels between 1957's The Naked Sun and 1982's ''Foundation's Edge'', two of which were mysteries). At a equivalent instance, he greatly increased his nin-nonfictional prose production, writing mostly on science topics; a launch of Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over the "science gap", which Asimov's publishers were zealous to fill by having when much lesson as he may write. Meanwhile, a each month Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction invited him to continue his regular non-nonfictional prose column, begun in the today-folded bimonthly companion magazine Venture Science Fiction, ostensibly dedicated to popular science, but sustaining Asimov getting complete editorial freedom. A number one of the F&SF columns appeared in November of 1958, and they followed uninterrupted thereafter, with 399 entries, until Asimov's terminal illness took its toll. These columns, sporadically collected into books by his primary publisher, Doubleday, helped make Asimov's reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science & were referred to by him when his lone pop-science writing where he never got to think about complete ignorance of the cases at hand on the section of his readers. A popularity of his 1st wide-ranging reference book, ''A Intelligent Human's Cure to Science, besides allowed him to give higher virtually all of his academic responsibilities & be basically the good-whale mercenary writer.

He published Asimov's Choice to the Bible'' inside 2 volumes—covering a Old Testament in 1967 and the New Testament in 1969—and then combined them into a single 1300-home volume around 1981. Replete by owning maps & tables, a prescription goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining a history of both one and a political influences that affected it, besides when biographic data all about the significant characters.

Asimov besides wrote many essays on the social contentions of his day, including "Thinking About Thinking" & "Science: Knock Plastic" (1967).

A awesome kind of trading tools covered within Asimov's writings another time prompted Kurt Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he lone knew how else it felt to keep around a reputation of omniscience—"Uneasy". (View Inside Joy However Felt, chapter Thirty.) In the introduction to his story collection Slow Learner, Thomas Pynchon admitted that he relied upon Asimov's science popularizations (and a Oxford English Dictionary) to provide his knowledge of entropy.

Other

Additionally to his interest witharound science, Asimov was as well greatly interested in history. Starting in the Sixties, he wrote xiv popular history books, virtually all notably A Greeks: A Great Adventure (1965), The Roman Republic (1966) and A Roman Empire (1967).

Never completely lacking wit & humor, towards the prevent of his life Asimov published a series of collections of limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with Lecherous Limericks, which appeared in 1975. Limericks: As well Gross, whose title displays Asimov's love of puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov & an equal total by John Ciardi. Asimov's Treasury of Humor is each the working joke book & the treatise propounding his views in humor theory. Based on data from either either Asimov, a virtually all essential element of humor even is an abrupt vary around point of learn from, a single that suddenly shifts focus from a significant to a trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Particularly around his late years, Asimov to a few extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable satyr. Within 1971, as a response to the popularity of intimate guide like A Sensuous Woman (by "J") & A Sensuous Human (by "M"), Asimov published A Sensuous Contaminated Husband under a byline "Dr. 'A'", however using his fully title conspicuously displayed on the handle.

Asimov published deuce volumes of autobiography: In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In Joy Still Felt (1980). The third autobiography, I personally. Asimov: The Memoir, was promulgated around April 1994. A epilogue was written by his widow woman Janet Asimov shortly after his demise. ''It's Been a Good Life'' (2002), edited by Janet, is a condensed version of his three autobiographies.

Literary themes

Great deal of Asimov's fiction dealt by using themes of paternalism. His 1st automaton story, "Robbie", concerned the robotic nanny. When a automaton grew further sophisticated, their interventions became extra wide-reaching & subtle. Within "Evidence", a golem masquerading as a man with success run elected professional. In "The Evitable Conflict", a automaton begin humanity from either behind the scenes, acting when nannies to the entirely coinage.

Late, around Robots and Empire, a automaton develops what he calls a Zeroth Law of Robotics, which states that "A robot may not injure humanity, nor, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm". He as well decides that robotic presence is stifling humanity's freedom, & that a better course is for the automaton to phase themselves retired. A non-robot novel, The End of Eternity, features a similar conflict & guide.

In The Foundation Series (which did not originally develop golem), the man of science implements the semi-secret project to produce the perfect society over the course of Yard years. This series has its version of Platonic guardians, called a 2nd Foundation, to right & protect a project. While Asimov stopped writing a series in the 1950s, the 2nd Foundation wwhen depicted as benign protectors of humanity. While he revisited a series in the 1980s, he made a paternalistic themes possibly other expressed.

''Foundation's Edge introduced the planet Gaia, obviously based on the Gaia hypothesis. Each creature, plant, & mineral around Gaithe participated in a shared out consciousness, forming one very-mind working together for the greater practiced. Within Foundation and Earth'', a protagonist must decide whether or even does'nt to allow the development of Galaxia, a big version of Gaia, encompassing a entire galaxy.

Foundation & Globe introduces automaton to the Foundation universe. 2 of Asimov's previous novels, Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation, explore their behavior fully detail. A automaton come depicted when covert operatives, acting for the benefit of humanity.

A second frequent theme, peradventure a reverse of paternalism, is social oppression. The Currents of Space takes place on the planet in which the unique plant fibre is grown; the farming workers there are exploited per patrician of a nearby planet. In The Stars, Like Dust, a hero helps the planet that is oppressed by an chesty interplanetary empire, the Tyranni.

Typically a those of oppressiin come either Globe population (when opposed to settler on more planets) or even golem. In "The Bicentennial Man", the golem fights bias to become accepted as a human being. In The Caves of Steel, a humans of Globe resent the loaded "Spacers" & successively handle golem (associated by having a Spacers) within ways redolent of how else whites treated blacks, like addressing golem when "boy". Pebble in the Sky shows an analogous situation: a Galactic Empire system Globe & its humans apply such terms when "Earthie-squaw", however Globe occurs as theocratic authoritarianism that enforces euthanasia of anyone older than sixty. 1 hero is Bel Arvardan, an upper-class Astronomical archaeologist world health organization must overcome his preconception. the more is Joseph Schwartz, a 62-season-old twentieth-century U.s. world health organization got emigrated from either Europe, where his humans were persecuted (he is quite even Jewish), and is inadvertently transported forward eventually to Arvardan's time. He must decide whether to help the downtrodden society that thinks he should become dead.

Eventually a second frequent theme within Asimov is rational thought. He invented a science-fiction mystery with the novel A Caves of Steel & a stories inside ''Asimov's Mysteries, normally swimming fair by using a reader by introducing early in the story any science or even technology exposed in the guide. Late, he produced non-SF mysteries, including a novel Murder at the ABA'' (1976) and a "Black Widowers" short stories, in which he followed a equivalent rule. Within his fiction, crucial scenes come typically basically debates, sustaining a other rational, humane—or even persuasive—side winning.

Criticisms

One of a usual impressions of Asimov's fiction act is that his literary genre is highly unornamental. Inside 1980, SF scholar James Gunn wrote of I, Automaton that

This description applies swell to the big proportion of Asimov's fiction, including that written fallowing 1980. Gunn observes that there are site in which Asimov's style rises to a demands of the situation; he cites the climax of "Liar!" for instance. A single should does'nt overlook a sharply drawn characters which occur at key junctures of his plot line: additionally to Susan Calvin in "Liar!" and "Evidence", i personally buy Arkady Darell around Second Foundation, Elijah Baley in The Caves of Steel and Hari Seldon in the Foundation prequels. (Around Forward the Foundation, Seldon becomes a unfair mirror of Asimov himself.)

Asimov was likewise criticised for the deficiency of sex & aliens around his science fiction. Asimov another time explained that his reluctance to write all about aliens come from either an incident early around his career once Astounding's editor John Campbell rejected one of his early science fiction stories because a alien characters were portrayed when superior to the homo. He decided that, like than write feeble alien characters, he would non write just about aliens the least bit. However, around response to these criticisms he wrote The Gods Themselves, which contains aliens, sex, and alien sex. Asimov said that of a lot his writings, he was virtually all pleased the middle segment of The Gods Themselves.

Others own criticised him for the want of hard female characters within his early operate. Within his autobiographical writings, he acknowledges this, & responds by pointing to rawness. His down the road novels, written by having supplementary female characters however inside basically the equivalent prose style when his early SF stories, brought this matter to a wider audience. For instance, a 25 August 1985 Washington Post's "Book World" division reports of Automaton & Empire when follows:

The considerable part of such criticism boils down to the charge that Asimov's works are non cyberpunk, or come just dated. As a matter of fact, a select few details of Asimov's fanciful first technology when he described to a higher degree fifty years ago develop non aged swell. He hwhen, e.g., described right golem & computers from either a distant new as however applying punch cards or punch tape and engineers using slide rules. His stories as well use occasional internal contradictions. A few stories state, e.g., that automaton just can't lie, when inside others automaton lie sequentially to obey a Three Laws of Robotics (i.e., it is ordered to lie or even must lie to protect the human).

Otherwise a books by Gunn & Patrouch, there is a proportional dearth of "literary" criticism in Asimov (particularly whilst in comparison a sheer volume of his output). Cowart & Wymer's Lexicon of Literary Biography (1981) gives a conceivable understanding:

Inside fairness, Gunn & Patrouch's various studies of Asimov two attest that the clear, straight prose style is however the style. Gunn's 1982 book goes into considerable depth commenting upon every of Asimov's novels published thereto date. He doesn't praise a lot of Asimov's fiction (& nor does Patrouch), however he does call for a few passages in The Caves of Steel "reminiscent of Proust". After discussing how else that novel depicts nighttime go over futurist New York City, Gunn says that Asimov's prose "need not be ashamed anywhere in literary society".

Although he prided himself around an unembellished prose style, he too enjoyed generating his hanker stories complicated narrative structures, typically by arranging chapters in non-chronological ways. A select few readers develop been put dispatch by this, complaining that a nonlinearity is non worth a condition & adversely impacts a clarity of the story. For instance, a number 1 third of The Gods Themselves begins by using Chapter 6, so backtracks to fill within earliest poop [http://homepage.mac.com/jhjenkins/Asimov/Books/Book121.html]. (Within fairness, a single should note that John Campbell advised Asimov to start his stories when late in the plot when conceivable. This titbit of advice helped Asimov produce "Reason," one of the early Golem stories. View Within Memory Eventually Green for details of that period.) Asimov's tendency to contort his timelines is mayhap virtually all apparent inside his late novel Nemesis, in which a single class action of characters sleep in a "present" & a second class action starts in the "past", beginning15 years sooner & bit by bit moving toward a period of the 1st class action.

Around 2002, Donald Palumbo, an English professor at East Carolina University published Chaos Theory, Asimov’s Foundations & Golem, and Herbert’s Dune: A Fractal Aesthetic of Epic Science Fiction. This includes the read of Asimov's narrative structures that compares a two by using the scientific conception of fractals and chaos. Palumbo finds that a fascination by using the Foundation and Robot metaseries remains, & he determines that a purposeful complexness of the tale build unusual symmetrical and recursive structures to exist as perceived per mind's eye. This volume contains a few of the virtually all scholarly & within-depth criticism of Asimov up to now.

John Jenkins, world health organization has reviewed a immense majority of Asimov's written output, another time found, In the Hugo Award-winning novella, "Gold", Asimov describes an author clearly according to himself world health organization has one of his books (The Gods Themselves) adapted into a "compu-drama", basically photo-real life computer animation. A director criticizes a fictionalized Asimov ("Gregory Laborian") for with an extremely nin-visual style making it hard to adapt his function, & andy skinner explains that he relies on ideas & dialogue like than description for his points through. Ironically, a story mimics a equivalent style andy skinner within it utilizes to describe his function, & a single could watch it when Asimov's reply to his critics.

Quotes
"If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster." "Early in my school career, I turned out to be an incorrigible disciplinary problem. I could understand what the teacher was saying as fast as she could say it, I found time hanging heavy, so I would occasionally talk to my neighbor. That was my great crime, I talked." "I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending." "If I could trace my origins to Judas Maccabaeus or King David, that would not add one inch to my stature. It may well be that many East European Jews are descended from Khazars, I may be one of them. Who knows? And who cares?" "In 1936, I first wrote science fiction. It was a long-winded attempt at writing an endless novel...which died. I remember one sentence, 'Whole forests stood sere and brown in midsummer.'. That was the first Asimovian science-fiction sentence." "Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers." "Night was a wonderful time in Brooklyn in the 1930s. Air conditioning was unknown except in movie houses, and so was television. There was nothing to keep one in the house. Furthermore, few people owned automobiles, so there was nothing to carry one away. That left the streets and the stoops. The very fullness served as an inhibition to crime." "No one can possibly have lived through the Great Depression without being scarred by it. No amount of experience since the Depression can convince someone who has lived through it that the world is safe economically." "True literacy is becoming an arcane art and the United States is steadily dumbing down." "Until I became a published writer, I remained completely ignorant of books on how to write and courses on the subject...they would have spoiled my natural style; made me observe caution; would have hedged me with rules." "When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself." "What I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of Robotics. What I want to be remembered for is no one book, or no dozen books. Any single thing I have written can be paralleled or even surpassed by something someone else has done. However, my total corpus for quantity, quality and variety can be duplicated by no one else. That is what I want to be remembered for", September 20, 1973, Yours, Isaac Asimov, page 329.

Selected bibliography

Additionally, watch a complete bibliography. Asimov aspired to write Five hundred books however did non quite email that aggregate; he wrote complete 463 titles. within case tons titles, stock & index charts, and emended collections come counted, there are presently 509 things in his complete bibliography. Asimov stand written an Opus 400, which would keep around been a celebration of his 400th title; the bibliography lists just as much as his commemorating Opus 300.

Science fiction

"Greater Foundation" series
The Automaton series: The Caves of Steel (1954), ISBN 0553293400 (first Elijah Baley SF-crime novel) The Naked Sun (1957), ISBN 0553293397 (second Elijah Baley SF-crime novel) The Robots of Dawn (1983), ISBN 0553299492 (third Elijah Baley SF-crime novel) Robots and Empire (1985) (sequel to the Elijah Baley trilogy) The Positronic Man (1993) (with Robert Silverberg, the novel according to Asimov's earliest short story "The Bicentennial Man")

Galactic Empire series: Pebble in the Sky (1950) The Stars, Like Dust (1951) The Currents of Space (1952)

Foundation series: Foundation (1951), ISBN 0553293354 Foundation and Empire (1952), ISBN 0553293370 Second Foundation (1953), ISBN 0553293362 ''Foundation's Edge (1982), ISBN 0553293389 Foundation and Earth (1986), ISBN 0553587579 Prelude to Foundation (1988), ISBN 0553278398 Forward the Foundation (1993), ISBN 0385247931 (hardcover), ISBN 0553404881 (paper-back book)

Novels not part of a series
The End of Eternity (1955) Fantastic Voyage (1966) (the novelisation of the picture featuring the team of U.s. man of science traveling in a anatomy) The Gods Themselves (1972) Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987) (not the sequel to the number 1 Todays Voyage, however an independent story) Nemesis (1989) Nightfall (1990) (with Robert Silverberg, a novel according to a earliest short story) The Ugly Little Boy (1992) (with Robert Silverberg, the novel according to an earliest short story)

(Spell primarily independent, a few one novels use at times super minor modems to the Foundation series.)

Short story collections

Besides look at List of short stories by Isaac Asimov

I, Robot (1950), ISBN 0553294385 The Martian Way and Other Stories (1955) Earth Is Room Enough (1957) Nine Tomorrows (1959) The Rest of the Robots (1964) Nightfall and Other Stories (1969) The Early Asimov (1972) The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973) Buy Jupiter and Other Stories (1975) The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories (1976) The Complete Robot (1982) The Winds of Change and Other Stories (1983) Robot Dreams (1986) Azazel (1988) Gold (1990) Robot Visions (1990) ISBN 0-451-45064-7 Magic (1995)

Mysteries

Novels

The Death Dealers (1958) (later republished as A Whiff of Dying) Murder at the ABA (1976) (also published when Authorized Murder)

Short story collections (Black Widowers and others)

Asimov's Mysteries (1968) Tales of the Black Widowers (1974) More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976) Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980) Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984) The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov (1986) Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990) Return of the Black Widowers'' (2003) contains stories uncollected at a instance of Asimov's dying, additionally to contributions by Charles Ardai and Harlan Ellison

Nonfiction

Popular science

Adding a Dimension (1964) Asimov on Numbers (1959) ''Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery (1989, second edition extends to 1993) Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991) The Chemicals of Life (1954) The Clock We Live On (1959) The Collapsing Universe (1977) ISBN 0-671-81738-8 The Earth (2004, revised by Richard Hantula) Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos (1982) The Human Brain (1964) Inside the Atom (1956) Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space (1991) The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1965) Jupiter (2004, revised by Richard Hantula) Life and Energy (1962) The Neutrino (1966) Our World in Space (1974) Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1977) Science, Numbers and I (1968) The Secret of The Universe (1990) The Solar System and Back (1970) The Sun (2003, revised by Richard Hantula) The Sun Shines Bright (1981) The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar (1966) Venus (2004, revised by Richard Hantula) Views of the Universe (1981) Words of Science and the History Behind Them (1959) The World of Carbon (1958) The World of Nitrogen (1958)

Annotations
Asimov's Annotated "Don Juan" Asimov's Annotated "Paradise Lost" Asimov's Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan A Annotated "Gulliver's Travels"

Guides
Asimov's Alternative to the Bible, vols I & 2 (1981), ISBN 0-517-34582-X Asimov's Solution to Shakespeare

Other
Opus 100 (1969) A Sensuous Bemire Husband (1971) ''Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1972) Opus 200 (1979) Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts'' (1979)