Asimov, Isaac (pulp fiction writer)

 
(1920-1992) Also wrote as: Paul French

Isaac Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russia, not long after the revolution, and arrived on American shores with his immigrant parents at age three. His brilliant mind and a burgeoning interest in science were apparent from a very young age. For the career that lay before him, Asimov’s timing and precocity were perfectly matched—the mid-1920s was a period in the United States that saw great new developments in the world of science and in the birth of a genre of popular literature that would come to be known as science fiction (SF). Asimov’s remarkable career encompassed the mastery of hard science—as a doctor and professor of biochemistry—and of its imaginative offshoot. Advanced to higher learning as a young teen, he received his master’s degree from Columbia University at 21. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, Asimov earned his Ph.D. from Columbia at 28 (his doctoral thesis was titled “The Kinetics of the Reaction Inactiva-tion of Tyroserose During Its Catalyzing of the Aerobic Oxidation of Catechol”). By that time he was already a 10-year veteran contributor to the science fiction pulp magazines.

Asimov’s first sale was a story called “Marooned Off Vesta,” sold to Amazing Stories in 1939. Soon after that Asimov’s own amazing qualities were discovered by John W. Campbell Jr., the highly respected young editor of the innovative and leading SF pulp Astounding, and the nurturer of much of the first generation of “hard” science fiction writers (whose fiction emphasized scientific principle over romance). Astounding’s publication of “Nightfall” in 1940 caused a sensation among the magazine’s readers and established Asimov’s name as one of the great new talents in the field. In the pages of Astounding, Asimov would write the Foundation stories, a staggering series stretching far into the future that took the outer-space adventure format to a new and altogether more complex level. Asimov would then make further innovations within his own groundbreaking series in the more humanistic volumes Pebble in the Sky, The Stars Like Dust, and The Currents of Space. The writer’s intriguing robot stories (collected as I, Robot) and his propagation of the so-called laws of robotics were further evidence that Asimov’s name on a magazine or  cover signaled to SF readers a guarantee of something different, thought-provoking, and fun to read.

In addition to his pulp and then paperback and hardcover science fiction, Asimov wrote SF aimed at young readers (some under his “Paul French” pen name), and wrote nonfiction topics for various age groups on the study of science, philosophy, history, Shakespeare, astronomy, dinosaurs, ecology, the proper use of the slide rule, and sex (the pseudonymous The Sensuous Dirty Old Man)—to name but a sampling. On occasion he would cross genre lines, or blur them, to write crime fiction, or crime science fiction, as in The Caves of Steel which features a robot detective. He was also a prodigious editor and anthologist, and for some years a science fiction digest magazine bore his name. With a near-constant supply of topics to be publicized, the writer was a ubiquitous guest on television shows for decades. For several generations of Americans, Asimov, with his egghead enthusiasms, untamed hair, and heavy grey muttonchops, was the embodiment of the eccentric, brilliant man of science and the best known representative—the public face—of science fiction itself.

Works

STORIES

  • “Belief” (1953);
  • “Black Friar of the Flame” (1942);
  • “Blind Alley” (1945);
  • “Breeds There a Man?” (1951);
  • “Button Button” (1953);
  • “Callistan Menace, The” (1940);
  • “Catch That Rabbit” (1944);
  • “Christmas on Ganymede” (1942);
  • “C-Shute” (1951);
  • “Darwinian Poolroom” (1950);
  • “Day of the Hunters” (1950);
  • “Death Sentence” (1943);
  • “Deep, The” (1952);
  • “Escape” (1945);
  • “Everest” (1953);
  • “Evidence” (1946);
  • “Files” (1953);
  • “Fun They Had, The” (1951);
  • “Green Patches” (1950);
  • “Half-Breed” (1940);
  • “Half Breeds on Venus” (1940);
  • “Hazing, The” (1942);
  • “Heredity” (1941);
  • “History” (1941);
  • “Homo Sol” (1940);
  • “Hostess” (1951);
  • “Imaginary, The” (1942);
  • “In a Good Cause” (1951);
  • “Inevitable Conflict, The” (1950);
  • “Kid Stuff” (1953);
  • “Legal Rites” (1950);
  • “Liar” (1941);
  • “Little Lost Robot” (1947);
  • “Little Man on the Subway, The” (1950);
  • “Magnificent Possession, The” (1940);
  • “Marooned Off Vesta” (1939);
  • “Monkey’s Finger, The” (1953);
  • “Mother Earth” (1949);
  • “Nightfall” (1941);
  • “Nobody Here But” (1953);
  • “No Connection” (1948);
  • “Not Final” (1941);
  • “Reason” (1941);
  • “Red Queen’s Race, The” (1949);
  • “Ring Around the Sun” (1940);
  • “Robbie” (1940);
  • “Robot AL-76 Goes Astray” (1942);
  • “Runaround” (1942);
  • “Sally” (1953);
  • “Satisfaction Guaranteed” (1951);
  • “Secret Sense, The” (1941);
  • “Shah Guido G.” (1951);
  • “Super Neutron” (1941);
  • “Time Pussy”
  • (1942); “Trends” (1939);
  • “Victory Unintentional” (1942);
  • “Weapon, The” (1942);
  • “Weapon Too Dreadful to Use, The” (1939);
  • “Youth” (1952)

BOOKS

  • Asimov’s Mysteries (1968);
  • Asimov’s Sherlockian Limericks (1978);
  • Bicentennial Man and Other Stories (1976);
  • Buy Jupiter and Other Stories (1975);
  • Caves of Steel, The (1954);
  • Complete Robot, The (1983);
  • Currents of Space, The (1952);
  • David Starr: Spaceranger (1952);
  • Death Dealers, The (1958);
  • Earth Is Room Enough (1957);
  • Edge of Tomorrow, The (1985);
  • End of Eternity, The (1955);
  • Fantastic Voyage (1966);
  • Fantastic Voyage II (1987);
  • Forward the Foundation (1993);
  • Foundation (1951);
  • Foundation and Earth (1986);
  • Foundation and Empire (1952);
  • Foundation’s Edge (1982);
  • Gods Themselves, The (1972);
  • Good Taste (1976);
  • Have You Seen These? (1974);
  • Heavenly Host, The (1975);
  • I, Asimov: A Memoir (1994);
  • I, Robot (1950);
  • In Joy Still Felt (1980);
  • In Memory Yet Green (1979);
  • Lecherous Limericks (1975);
  • Like Dust (1951);
  • Limericks, Too Gross (1978);
  • Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956);
  • Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957);
  • Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954);
  • Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953);
  • Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958);
  • Martian Way and Other Stories, The (1955, 1982);
  • More Lecherous Limericks (1976);
  • More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976);
  • Murder at the ABA (1976);
  • Naked Sun, The (1957);
  • Nemesis (1989);
  • Nightfall (1990);
  • Nightfall and Other Stories (1969);
  • Nine Tomorrows: Tales of the Near Future (1959);
  • Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot (1983);
  • Norby and the Court Jester (1993);
  • Norby and the Invaders (1985);
  • Norby and the Lost Princess (1985);
  • Norby and the Oldest Dragon (1990);
  • Norby and the Queen’s Necklace (1987);
  • Norby and Yobo’s Great Adventure (1989);
  • Norby Down to Earth (1988);
  • Norby’s Other Secret (1984);
  • Pebble in the Sky (1950);
  • Positronic Man, The (1993);
  • Prelude to Foundation (1988);
  • Rest of the Robots, The (1964);
  • Robots and Empire (1985);
  • Robots of Dawn, The (1983);
  • Second Foundation (1953);
  • Sensuous Dirty Old Man, The (1971);
  • Stars, The (1951);
  • Still More Lecherous Limericks (1977);
  • Tales of the Black Widowers (1974);
  • Through a Glass, Clearly (1967);
  • Winds of Change and Other Stories, The (1983);
  • Yours, Isaac Asimov (1995)

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