Asimov was born sometime between October 4, 1919 and January 2, 1920 in Petrovichi in Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (during the Soviet times the settlement briefly belonged to Mahiljow guberniya of the Russian SFSR, then it was transferred to Smolensk Oblast of the RSFSR, now Russia
In 1949, the book publisher Doubleday's science fiction editor Walter I. Bradbury accepted Asimov's unpublished novelette "Grow Old Along With Me" (40,000 words) for publication, but requested that it be extended to a full novel of 70,000 words. The book appeared under the Doubleday imprint in January 1950 with the title of
Pebble in the Sky. The Doubleday company went on to publish five more original science fiction novels by Asimov in the 1950s, along with the six juvenile Lucky Starr novels, under the pseudonym of "Paul French". Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning with
The Martian Way and Other Stories in 1955. The early 1950s also saw the Gnome Press company publishing one collection of Asimov's positronic robot stories as
I, Robot and his
Foundation stories and novelettes as the three books of the
Foundation Trilogy. More positronic robot stories were republished in book form as
The Rest of the Robots.
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". A number of these stories are included in his
Best of anthology, including "The Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to cope with and potentially reverse the process of entropy. It was his personal favorite and considered by many to be equal to "Nightfall". Asimov wrote of it in 1973:
Why is it my favorite? For one thing I got the idea all at once and didn't have to fiddle with it; and I wrote it in white-heat and scarcely had to change a word. This sort of thing endears any story to any writer.
Then, too, it has had the strangest effect on my readers. Frequently someone writes to ask me if I can give them the name of a story, which they think I may have written, and tell them where to find it. They don't remember the title but when they describe the story it is invariably "The Last Question". This has reached the point where I recently received a long-distance phone call from a desperate man who began, 'Dr. Asimov, there's a story I think you wrote, whose title I can't remember' at which point I interrupted to tell him it was "The Last Question" and when I described the plot it proved to be indeed the story he was after. I left him convinced I could read minds at a distance of a thousand miles.
In December 1974, the former Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by McCartney's group Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea, although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a "treatment" or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea, producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic. However, he did not make use of McCartney's brief scrap of dialogue, and probably as a consequence, McCartney rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in the Boston University archives.
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 (in the same manner as the stablemates
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine's and
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine's "anthologies").
Popular science
During the late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov shifted gears somewhat, and substantially decreased his fiction output (he published only four adult novels between 1957's
The Naked Sun and 1982's
Foundation's Edge, two of which were mysteries). At the same time, he greatly increased his non-fiction production, writing mostly on science topics; the launch of Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over a "science gap", which Asimov's publishers were eager to fill with as much material as he could write.
Meanwhile, the monthly
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction invited him to continue his regular non-fiction column, begun in the now-folded bimonthly companion magazine
Venture Science Fiction Magazine, ostensibly dedicated to popular science, but with Asimov having complete editorial freedom. The first of the
F&SF columns appeared in November 1958, and they followed uninterrupted thereafter, with 399 entries, until Asimov's terminal illness. These columns, periodically collected into books by his principal publisher, Doubleday, helped make Asimov's reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science, and were referred to by him as his only pop-science writing in which he never had to assume complete ignorance of the subjects at hand on the part of his readers. The popularity of his first wide-ranging reference work,
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science, also allowed him to give up most of his academic responsibilities and become essentially a full-time freelance writer.
Asimov wrote several essays on the social contentions of his time, including "Thinking About Thinking" and "Science: Knock Plastic" (1967).
The great variety of information covered in Asimov's writings once prompted Kurt Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he only knew how it felt to have the
reputation of omniscience..."Uneasy". (See
In Joy Still Felt, chapter 30.) In the introduction to his story collection
Slow Learner, Thomas Pynchon admitted that he relied upon Asimov's science popularizations (and the
Oxford English Dictionary) to provide his knowledge of entropy.
It is a mark of the friendship and respect accorded Asimov by Arthur C. Clarke that the so-called "Asimov-Clarke Treaty of Park Avenue", put together as they shared a cab ride along Park Avenue in New York, stated that Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself). Thus the dedication in Clarke's book
Report on Planet Three (1972) reads:
"In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer."
Coined terms
Asimov coined the term Spome in a paper entitled, “There’s No Place Like Spome” in
Atmosphere in Space Cabins and Closed Environments, originally presented as a paper to the American Chemical Society on September 13, 1965. It refers to any system closed with respect to matter and open with respect to energy capable of sustaining human life indefinitely.Asimov also coined the term Robotics in his 1942 story Runaround.
Other writing
In addition to his interest in science, Asimov was also greatly interested in history. Starting in the 1960s, he wrote 14 popular history books, most notably
The Greeks: A Great Adventure (1965),
The Roman Republic (1966),
The Roman Empire (1967),
The Egyptians (1967) and
The Near East: 10,000 Years of History (1968).
He published
Asimov's Guide to the Bible in two volumes...covering the Old Testament in 1967 and the New Testament in 1969... and then combined them into one 1,300-page volume in 1981. Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important characters. His interest in literature manifested itself in several annotations of literary works, including
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970),
Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost (1974), and
The Annotated Gulliver's Travels (1980).
Asimov was also a noted mystery author and a frequent contributor to
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He began by writing science fiction mysteries such as his Wendell Urth stories but soon moved on to writing "pure" mysteries. He only published two full-length mystery novels but he wrote several stories about the Black Widowers, a group of men who met monthly for dinner, conversation, and a puzzle. He got the idea for the Widowers from his own association in a stag group called the Trap Door Spiders and all of the main characters (with the exception of the waiter, Henry, whom he admitted resembled Wodehouse's Jeeves) were modeled after his closest friends.
Toward the end of his life, Asimov published a series of collections of limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with
Lecherous Limericks, which appeared in 1975.
Limericks: Too Gross, whose title displays Asimov's love of puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov and an equal number by John Ciardi. He even created a slim volume of Sherlockian limericks (and embarrassed one fan by autographing her copy with an impromptu limerick that rhymed 'Nancy' with 'romancy'). Asimov featured Yiddish humor in
Azazel, The Two Centimeter Demon. The two main characters, both Jewish, talk over dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, about anecdotes of "George" and his friend Azazel. Asimov's
Treasury of Humor is both a working joke book and a treatise propounding his views on humor theory. According to Asimov, the most essential element of humor is an abrupt change in point of view, one that suddenly shifts focus from the important to the trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual guidebooks such as
The Sensuous Woman (by "J") and
The Sensuous Man (by "M"), Asimov published
The Sensuous Dirty Old Man under the byline "Dr. 'A'" (although his full name was printed on the paperback edition, first published 1972).
Asimov published two volumes of autobiography:
In Memory Yet Green (1979) and
In Joy Still Felt (1980). A third autobiography,
I. Asimov: A Memoir, was published in April 1994. The epilogue was written by his widow Janet Asimov a decade after his death.
It's Been a Good Life (2002), edited by Janet, is a condensed version of his three autobiographies. He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his writing,
Opus 100 (1969),
Opus 200 (1979), and
Opus 300 (1984).
In 1987, the Asimovs co-wrote
How to Enjoy Writing: A Book of Aid and Comfort. In it they offer advice on how to maintain a positive attitude and stay productive when dealing with discouragement, distractions, rejection and thick-headed editors. The book includes many quotations, essays, anecdotes and husband-wife dialogues about the ups and downs of being an author.
Asimov and
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during
Star Trek's initial launch in the late 1960s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on
Star Trek's scientific accuracy for
TV Guide magazine. Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to TV Guide claiming despite its inaccuracies, that
Star Trek was a fresh and intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained friends to the point where Asimov even served as an advisor on a number of
Star Trek projects.
In 1973, Asimov published a proposal for calendar reform, called the
World Season Calendar. It divides the year into four seasons (named A—D) of 13 weeks (91 days) each. This allows days to be named, e.g., "D-73" instead of December 1. An extra
Year Day is added for a total of 365 days.
Literary themes
Much of Asimov's fiction dealt with the relationship between robot and humans and the effect upon both parties, though most particularly humans. His first robot story, "Robbie", concerned a robotic nanny. "Lenny" deals with the capacity of robopsychologist Susan Calvin to feel maternal love towards a robot whose positronic brain capacities are those of a 3-year-old. As the robots grew more sophisticated, their interventions became more wide-reaching and subtle. In "Evidence", the story revolves around a candidate who successfully
runs for office who may be a robot masquerading as a human. In "The Evitable Conflict", the robots run humanity from behind the scenes, acting as nannies to the whole species.
Later, in
The Robots of Dawn and
Robots and Empire, a robot develops what he calls the Zeroth Law of Robotics, which states that: "A robot may not injure humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm". He also decides that robotic presence is stifling humanity's freedom, and that the best course of action is for the robots to phase themselves out. A non-robot, time travel novel,
The End of Eternity, features a similar conflict and resolution. The significance of the Zeroth Law is that it outweighs and supersedes all other Laws of Robotics: if a robot finds himself in a situation whereby he must murder one or more humans (a direct violation of the First Law of Robotics) in order to protect all of humanity (and preserve the Zeroth Law), then the robot's positronic programming will require him to commit murder for humanity's sake. Only highly advanced robots (such as Daneel and Giskard) could comprehend this law.
In The Foundation Series (which did not originally have robots), a scientist implements a semi-secret plan to create a new galactic empire over the course of 1,000 years. This series has its version of Platonic guardians, called the Second Foundation, to perfect and protect the plan. When Asimov stopped writing the series in the 1950s, the Second Foundation was depicted as benign protectors of humanity. When he revisited the series in the 1980s, he made the caretaker themes even more explicit.
Foundation's Edge introduced the planet Gaia, obviously based on the Gaia hypothesis. Every animal, plant, and mineral on Gaia participated in a shared consciousness, forming a single super-mind working together for the greater good. In
Foundation and Earth, the protagonist starts searching for the Earth, thinking that there he could find the answer of why he decided, in
Foundation's Edge, that Galaxia was the right choice to take. Gaia is one of Asimov's best attempts at exploring the possibility of a collective awareness, and is compounded further in
Nemesis, in which the planet
Erythro composed primarily of prokaryotic life has a mind of its own and seeks communion with human beings.
Foundation and Earth introduces robots to the Foundation universe. Two of Asimov's last novels,
Prelude to Foundation and
Forward the Foundation, explore their behavior in fuller detail. The robots are depicted as covert operatives, acting for the benefit of humanity.
Another frequent theme is social oppression.
The Currents of Space takes place on a planet where a unique plant fiber is grown; the agricultural workers there are exploited by the aristocrats of a nearby planet. In
The Stars, Like Dust, the hero helps a planet that is oppressed by an arrogant interplanetary empire, the Tyranni.
Often the victims of oppression are either Earth people (as opposed to colonists on other planets) or robots. In "The Bicentennial Man", a robot fights prejudice to be accepted as a human. In
The Caves of Steel, the people of Earth resent the wealthier "Spacers" and in turn treat robots (associated with the Spacers) in ways reminiscent of how whites treated blacks, such as addressing robots as "boy".
Pebble in the Sky shows an analogous situation: the Galactic Empire rules Earth and its people use such terms as "Earthie-squaw", but Earth is a theocratic dictatorship that enforces euthanasia of anyone older than 60. One hero is Bel Arvardan, an upper-class Galactic archaeologist who must overcome his prejudices. The other is Joseph Schwartz, a 62-year-old 20th century American who had emigrated from Europe, where his people were persecuted (he is quite possibly Jewish), and is accidentally transported forward in time to Arvardan's period. He must decide whether to help a downtrodden society that thinks he should be dead.
Yet another frequent theme in Asimov is rational thought. He invented the science-fiction mystery with the novel
The Caves of Steel and the stories in
Asimov's Mysteries, usually playing fair with the reader by introducing early in the story any science or technology involved in the solution. Later, he produced non-SF mysteries, including the novel
Murder at the ABA (1976) and the "Black Widowers" and "Union Club" short stories, in which he followed the same rule. In his fiction, important scenes are often essentially debates, with the more rational, humane...or persuasive...side winning.
Awards
- 1957Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award, for Building Blocks of the Universe
- 1960Howard W. Blakeslee Award from the American Heart Association for The Living River
- 1962Boston University's Publication Merit Award
- 1963special Hugo Award for "adding science to science fiction" for essays published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
- 1965James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society (now called the James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry)
- 1966Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award for the Foundation series
- 1967Westinghouse Science Writing Award
- 1972Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
- 1973Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
- 1973Locus award for Best Science Fiction Novel for The Gods Themselves
- 1977Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
- 1977Nebula Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
- 1981An asteroid, 5020 Asimov, was named in his honor
- 1983Hugo Award for Best Novel for Foundation's Edge
- 1983Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Foundation's Edge
- 1987Nebula Grand Master award, a lifetime achievement award
- 1992Hugo Award for Best Novelette for Gold
- 1995Hugo Award for Best Nonfiction for I. Asimov: A Memoir
- 1996A 1946 Retro-Hugo for Best Novel of 1945 was given at the 1996 WorldCon to The Mule, the 7th Foundation story published in Astounding Science Fiction
- 1997Posthumous induction into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame
- 2009A crater on the planet Mars, Asimov, was named in his honor
- 14 honorary doctorate degrees from various universities