Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov was born around January 2, 1920 (his date of birth for official purposes—the precise date is not certain) in Petrovichi shtetl of Smolensk Oblast, RSFSR (now Russia) to Anna Rachel Berman Asimov and JudIsaac Asimovah Asimov, a Jewish family of millers. They immigrated to the United States when he was three years old. Since the parents always spoke Yiddish and English with their son, he never learned Russian.

Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, he taught himself to read at the age of five, and remained fluent in Yiddish as well as English. His parents owned a small general store and everyone in the family was expected to work in it. Science fiction magazines were sold in the store when he began to reading then. Around the age of eleven, he began to write his own stories and, within a few years, he was selling many of them to pulp magazines.

Isaac Asimov graduated from Columbia University in 1939 and earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry there in 1948. In between, he spent three years during World War II working 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, he joined the faculty of Boston University, with which he remained associated thereafter. From 1958, this was in a non-teaching capacity, as he became a full-time writer (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. His personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at its Mugar Memorial Library, where they fill 464 boxes on 71 metres of shelf space.

He married Gertrude Blugerman (1917, Canada–1990, Boston) on July 26, 1942, and they had two children, David (b. 1951) and Robyn Joan (b. 1955). After a separation begun in 1970, he and Gertrude were divorced in 1973, and Asimov married Janet O. Jeppson later that year.

Isaac 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.

Isaac 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 like 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.

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, Massachusetts. In his joke book Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston driving as "anarchy on wheels".

Isaac Asimov's wide interests iIsaac Asimovncluded his participation in his later years in organizations devoted to the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan and the Nero Wolfe mysteries of 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).

Isaac 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. The specific cause of death was heart and renal failure as complications of AID.

Janet Asimov writes 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 AIDS infection after he died, but the controversy which erupted when Arthur Ashe announced that he had contracted 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.

Selected bibliography

Isaac Asimov aspired to write 500 books but did not quite reach that total; he wrote over 463 titles. If all titles, charts, and edited collections are counted, there are currently 509 items in his complete bibliography. Asimov could have written an Opus 400, which would have been a celebration of his 400th title; the bibliography lists only up to his commemorative Opus 300.

Science fiction

"Greater Foundation" series

The Robot series was originally separate from the Foundation series. The Galactic Empire novels were originally published as independent stories. Later in life, Asimov synthesized them into a single coherent 'history' that appeared in the extension of the Foundation series.

The Robot 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, a novel based on Asimov's earlier short story "The Bicentennial Man")

Galactic Empire series:

  • Pebble in the Sky (1950)
  • The Stars, Like Dust (1951)
  • The Currents of Space (1952)

Original Foundation trilogy:

  • Foundation (1951), ISBN 0553293354
  • Foundation and Empire (1952), ISBN 0553293370
  • Second Foundation (1953), ISBN 0553293362

Extended Foundation series:

  • 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 (paperback)

Novels not part of a series

  • The End of Eternity (1955) (there is a loose connection with Foundation's Edge, in which this story is referenced)
  • Fantastic Voyage (1966) (a novelization of the movie featuring a team of American scientists traveling within a human body)
  • The Gods Themselves (1972)
  • Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987) (not a sequel to the first Fantastic Voyage, but an independent story)
  • Nemesis (1989)
  • Nightfall (1990) (with Robert Silverberg, a novel based on the earlier short story)
  • The Ugly Little Boy (1992) (with Robert Silverberg, a novel based on the earlier short story, appeared in the UK under the title Child of Time)

(While primarily independent, some of these novels have very minor connections to the Foundation series.)

Short story collections

  • 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)
  • Asimov's Mysteries (1968)
  • 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)
  • The Alternate Asimovs (1986)
  • The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov (1986)
  • 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 Death)
  • Murder at the ABA (1976) (also published as Authorized Murder)

Short story collections by Isaac Asimov

  • Asimov's Mysteries

Black Widowers and others

  • Tales of the Black Widowers (1974)
  • More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976)
  • The Key Word and Other Mysteries (1977)
  • Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980)
  • The Union Club Mysteries (1983)
  • Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984)
  • The Disappearing Man and Other Mysteries (1985)
  • The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov (1986)
  • Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990)
  • Return of the Black Widowers (2003) contains stories uncollected at the time of Asimov's death, in addition to contributions by Charles Ardai and Harlan Ellison

Nonfiction

Popular science

Collections of columns from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

  1. Fact and Fancy (1962)
  2. View from a Height (1963)
  3. Adding a Dimension (1964)
  4. Of Time, Space, & Other Things (1965)
  5. From Earth to Heaven (1966)
  6. Science, Numbers and I (1968)
  7. The Solar System and Back (1970)
  8. The Stars in Their Course (1971)
  9. Left Hand of the Electron (1972)
  10. The Tragedy of the Moon (1973)
  11. Of Matters Great & Small (1975)
  12. The Planet that Wasn't (1976)
  13. Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1977)
  14. Road to Infinity (1979)
  15. The Sun Shines Bright (1981)
  16. Counting the Eons (1983)
  17. X Stands for Unknown (1984)
  18. The Subatomic Monster (1985)
  19. Far as Human Eye Could See (1987)
  20. The Relativity of Wrong (1988)
  21. Out of Everywhere (1990)
  22. The Secret of The Universe (1990)

Others

  • 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)
  • The Sun (2003, revised by Richard Hantula)
  • 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)
  • Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor (1971)

Annotations

  • Asimov's Annotated "Don Juan"
  • Asimov's Annotated "Paradise Lost"
  • Asimov's Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan
  • The Annotated "Gulliver's Travels"

Guides

  • Asimov's Guide to the Bible, vols I and II (1981), ISBN 0-517-34582-X
  • Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, vols I and II (1970), ISBN 0-517-26825-6

Other

  • Opus 100 (1969)
  • The Sensuous Dirty Old Man (1971)
  • Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1972)
  • Opus 200 (1979)
  • Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts (1979)
  • The Roving Mind (1983) (collection of essays). New edition published by Prometheus Books, 1997, ISBN 1-57392-181-5.

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