bonr 1920 in Russia
Emigrated to the United States in 1923
Became a U.S. citizen in 1928
B.A., M.A., and PhD from Columbia University
Worked at the U.S. Naval Air Experimental Station during World War II
After the war he was an associate professor of biochemistry at the Boston University School of Medicine until he resigned to write full time.
Died 1992
Asimov
began writing science fiction while still a teenager. Incredibly
prolific, he was a non-stop writer who wrote over 500 books in his lifetime.
|
Key
works include:
- "Nightfall," written at Campbell's suggestions and often voted the best science fiction
story of all time
- the
Robot stories, beginning with "Robbie," (originally published as "Strange Playfellow") "Reason," and "Runaround,"
which formally introduced Asimov's positronic robots and the Three Laws
of Robotics that were probably a collaboration between Asimov and Campbell.
- the
Foundation series (1942-50), inspired by Campbell who asked Asimov for
an open-ended serial.
Asimov's
first two robot novels, are also interesting for being murder mysteries:
- The Caves of Steel (1954)
- The Naked Sun (1957)
My
favorite novel from this period is a time travel tale: The
End of Eternity (1955).
After
a lengthy hiatus from science fiction during which he wrote numerous popular
non-fiction books on topics ranging from the hard sciences to the Bible,
Asimov returned to the field with the publication of The
Gods Themselves (1973), his most scientifically-oriented novel and the winner of both
the Hugo and the Nebula. |
He
then began to write a series of sequels to his Foundation and Robot series
and eventually attempted to tie the two storylines together:
- Foundation's Edge (1982), winner of the Hugo
- The Robots of Dawn (1983)
- Robots and Empire (1985)
- Foundation and Earth (1986)
- Prelude to Foundation (1988)
- Forward the Foundation (1992)
Others,
most notably Gregory Benford, continue to publish stories set in the universe
of the Foundation. |
InfoMarks