Isaac Asimov

created by matWORK

(thing) by Xamot (8.3 mon) (print) ? 1 C! I like it! Wed May 03 2000 at 15:54:25

Science Writer, `Robotics' Creator Isaac Asimov Dies

New York

More than 40 years ago, a character in Isaac Asimov's most famous science fiction series, the "Foundation" trilogy, said, "My novels are going to be interesting and are going to sell and be famous. What's the use of writing books unless you sell them and become well-known? I don't want some old professors to know me. It's got to be everybody."

Even as he was writing those words, Asimov was establishing his reputation as one of the world's premier science fiction writers. Asimov, who died in New York Monday at 72, ultimately became this century's most recognized one-man encyclopedist -- with 477 published titles by his own count.

Long before the advent of the Information Age, Asimov was a singular information processor. "Isaac Asimov is the greatest explainer of the age," said Carl Sagan, the Cornell University astronomer.

Such a feat was accomplished by an extraordinary combination of imagination and intellect: an imagination that allowed him to soar into the future matched with an intellect that allowed him to roam in the past and present, searching for explanations of anything and everything.

"Isaac wrote seminal works of science fiction, and I suspect that long after his other contributions sort of blend into history, his speculations about robotics and artificial intelligence will survive long into the future," said longtime collaborator Martin Greenberg, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay.

Asimov, along with the genre's two other acknowledged giants, the late Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, influenced the generation that propelled us into space and landed us on the moon, Greenberg said. The coming generation, he said, will have been much more influenced by the technology of moviemaking, particularly the George Lucas epics.

"Before, the sense of wonder was strictly with the writers," said Greenberg, who during the past 15 years collaborated with Asimov on more than 100 anthologies.

A man of little false humility, Asimov could be self-deprecating and self-congratulatory at the same time. Consider the citation in the most recent "Who's Who," which runs 128 lines -- mostly devoted to listing his published works but including a recipe for living that says in part: "I have been fortunate to be born with a restless and efficient brain, with a capacity of clear thought and an ability to put that thought into words ... I am the lucky beneficiary of a lucky break in the genetic sweepstakes."

Although he could not lay claim to publishing the largest number of books (the Guinness Book of Records identifies that champion as Josef Ignacy Kraszewski, a Polish writer of the 19th century who produced more than 600 volumes), Asimov did cover the largest range of subjects. He managed over his creative lifetime to have at least one book included in each of the Dewey Decimal System's 10 major library classifications.

Asimov explored what interested him: Shakespeare, the Bible, Gilbert and Sullivan, limericks, history, whether it be Roman, Greek or American. He annotated "Gulliver's Travels" and collected Sherlock Holmes limericks.

Copyright 1992 by The Tech. All rights reserved.
This story was published on Tuesday, April 7, 1992.
Volume 112, Number 18
The story was printed on page 3.
This article may be freely distributed electronically, provided it is distributed in its entirety and includes this notice, but may not be reprinted without the express written permission of The Tech. Write to archive@the-tech.mit.edu for additional details.

(person) by Gamaliel (4.3 y) (print) ? 6 C!s I like it! Mon Oct 02 2000 at 18:07:51

Dr. Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) was born in Petrovichi, Russia to Jewish parents who emigrated to Brooklyn when he was three. Perturbed by the long walk to the public library, he began to write his own stories at age 11, starting with The Greenville Chums at College. Eight chapters later, he abandoned the work when he realized he had no idea what he was writing about, having yet to attend college.

Exposed to the then brand new genre of science fiction through pulp magazines in his family's candy store, where he worked, he began submitting stories to them. John W. Campbell at Astounding Science Fiction rejected his first three submissions, but Astounding Stories published the fourth, "Marooned Off Vesta," in 1939.

He spent most of World War II working at the Philadelphia Naval Yard participating in scientific experiments and later served a year in Army at the tail end of the conflict. In 1948 he earned his PhD in biochemistry from Columbia University and started teaching at Boston University. Preferring teaching and general science writing to, in his words, being merely a mediocre research scientist, he quit in 1958 to become a full-time writer.

And quite a writer he was, probably one of the most prolific in history. Depending on how you count them, he wrote around 500 books. It's been said that he wrote a book on every subject except animal husbandry. It isn't true that he has a book in every category of the Dewey Decimal System (he has no books in the 100s, philosophy), but his accomplishment of having so many books in so many different categories may be unsurpassed. Asimov, "the great explainer," wrote mostly about science, about every possible branch of science it seems, but also wrote a number of volumes on literature and history. He also wrote plenty of fiction, including humor and mysteries.

And of course, he is remembered for being one of the most important early writers of science fiction. His accomplishments include:

• The Foundation trilogy (well, it was originally a trilogy anyway) about a galactic empire and a new science called "psychohistory" which can predict the future with astounding accuracy. Asimov was inspired by Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In 1966, it won a Hugo award for best all-time novel series.

• The Robot Trilogy. When John Campbell said that it was impossible to write a science fiction detective story, Asimov promptly wrote The Caves of Steel, featuring police officer Elijah Bailey and lifelike robot R. Daneel Olivaw. The sequels were The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn.

• The robot short stories, especially I, Robot. Many of them feature U.S.Robots employee Susan Calvin investigating robot screw-ups and mysteries. For these stories, Asimov created the Three Laws of Robotics and coined the word "robotics".

• The novels The End of Eternity and The Gods Themselves.

• The short stories "Nightfall", "The Bicentennial Man", and "The Ugly Little Boy", all made into films.

• Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, a pulp magazine that still exists.

Some critics dismiss his importance to the genre. A common complaint is that he could not write about aliens or sex. True, most of his stories were about humans and robots, but he wrote about both aliens and sex quite well in The Gods Themselves, and was proud of the novel because of that. Asimov's writing usually was not very exotic and contained little action, but as (I think) Orson Scott Card said, "Asimov's talk is action." But his seemingly tame writing and the fact that his innovations have been so thoroughly absorbed by the genre make it easy for some to mistakenly overlook his accomplishments.

In 1987 he was named a Nebula Grandmaster. He died of heart and kidney failure in 1992.

(person) by RimRod (13.8 hr) (print) ? I like it! Mon Dec 18 2000 at 23:27:12

"...was the only author to write at least one book for every genre and every major catagory of the Dewey Decimal System. His best work, however, was in science fiction."

That is, in fact, an exaggeration, as Asimov himself admits in his autobiography. He did come pretty damn close though.

He is my favorite author, period. I read the Foundation series about once every two years as to be sure I don't forget any of it.

I met him once, in an elevator at a Star Trek convention. You can read a rather heartfelt letter I never got around to sending him at Letter to Isaac Asimov.

(person) by Art Tatum (6.9 y) (print) ? I like it! Wed Feb 21 2001 at 1:40:38

Asimov's fiction is simply amazing. Partly because he never simply wrote novels that had futuristic overtones. His stories always turned on logical, philosophical, or sociological principles and ideas. For example, his fine Elijah Bailey series dealt with a very realistic and gripping society. Of course, they're also excellent murder mysteries, and they're engrossing tales, but his construction of a future society is so realistic it's astonishing.

In response to the issue of his "not being able to write about aliens," this really is kind of a misdirected critique. As he said in a foreword somewhere or other, he actually did write some early stories that contained aliens. His stories often portrayed the aliens as being superior to humans and this was intensely disliked by the editors of the magazines he wrote for. They always made him alter his stories, which displeased him greatly. So, he stopped writing about aliens altogether. Instead, he turned his attention to robots and humanity and never looked back.

I also would like to recommend that everyone out there in E2-land read the Robot City series--they're fantastic! The idea behind them is that Asimov came up with a basic idea for the series and then let other writers take it where they wanted. Each book is by a different author who took up where the last one left off, with some moderate guidance and ideas from Asimov. It's good stuff!

(person) by avjewe (1.9 hr) (print) ? 2 C!s I like it! Tue Jun 19 2001 at 13:02:11

The (mostly) complete books of Isaac Asimov, in (mostly) the order written: