Isaac Asimov’s Science fiction works

Isaac Asimov’s Science fiction works

Isaac Asimov (To Know more about Asimov Click) first began reading the science fiction pulp magazines sold in his family's confectionery store in 1929. He began writing his first science fiction story, Cosmic Corkscrew, in 1937. In October he sold the third story he finished, Marooned off Vesta, to Amazing Stories ( a monthly ) Two more of his stories appeared that year, The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use in the May Amazing and Trends in the July Astounding. His single most famous piece of fiction, Nightfall, appeared in 1941,which has been described as one of "the most famous science-fiction stories of all time".

In 1942 he published the first of his Foundation stories, later collected in the Foundation Trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). It was voted the most popular series in the history of the field and has become the touchstone for all other science fiction novels. Taken together, they are his most famous work of science fiction, along with the Robot Series. Many years later, due to pressure by fans on Asimov to write another,  he continued the series with 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 to the Foundation (1992). The series features his fictional science of Psychohistory in which the future course of the history of large populations can be predicted.

An influential vision came with another 1950 release, the story collection I, Robot, which looked at human/construct relationships and featured the Three Laws of Robotics.

Pebble in the Sky follows the plight of a man from our time accidentally transported into the distant future and into the midst of a political struggle within a galactic empire. The first volume of the Lucky Starr series appeared in 1952, and five more young adult novels would follow by 1958, each of which wrapped a rousing adventure around an accurate, detailed description of a different planetary body in the solar system. Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning with  The Martian Way and Other Stories in 1955.  His next work at that length would not appear until 1972: The Gods Themselves, which won a Hugo as best novel of the year, is set in a future wherein humans attempt to draw energy from a parallel universe and encounter a race of very alien beings.

When new science fiction magazines, notably Galaxy magazine and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, appeared in the 1950s, Asimov began publishing short stories in them as well. He would later refer to the 1950s as his "golden decade". Between 1990 and 1992, three collaborative novels with Robert Silverberg were published, each based on an Asimov short story, and it seems likely that this was the limit of the latter’s contribution. The novels were The Ugly Little Boy (aka Child of Time) and Nightfall, both based on the short story of the same name, and The Positronic Man, based on The Bicentennial Man.

Beginning in 1977, Asimov lent his name to Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine (now Asimov’s Science Fiction) and penned an editorial for each issue. There was also a short-lived Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine and a companion Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology reprint series, published as magazines.                                 

ebinkvk@gmail.com