psedonym Paul French
Prolific American science fiction writer, Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1948 from Columbia University. For five decades Asimov was one of the central figures of sf, whose classical works include NIGHTFALL (1941), FOUNDATION (1951), FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE (1952), SECOND FOUNDATION (1953), THE CAVES OF STEEL (1954), THE END OF ETERNITY (1955), THE NAKED SUN (1957) and THE GODS THEMSELVES (1972).
Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russia but his family moved to United States in 1923, and settled in New York, where his parents opened a sweet-shop. After leaving the boys' high school in Brooklyn, Asimov studied chemistry at Columbia University, New York, where he graduated in 1939 and received his MA in 1941.
During WW II Asimov worked in the US Naval Air Experimental Station alongside L. Sprague de Camp and Robert A. Heinlein. Towards the end of the war he served in the army as a corporal.
In 1949 Asimov joined the Boston University School of Medicine, where he worked as an associate professor of biochemistry. Although he soon gained the status as one of the best lecturers, his teaching duties were limited from 1958. Asimov devoted himself into writing and focused mostly on non-fiction, publishing such works as the NEW INTELLIGENT MAN'S GUIDE TO SCIENCE and books on history and literary topics. Asimov remained associate professor until 1979, and subsequently held the title of professor.
Asimov's first tales appeared in science-fiction magazines in 1939. His break through short story Nightfall (1941) is acclaimed to be the science fiction story ever written - overstatement of course. The poetic story depicts a world which has six suns, and at least one of which is always shining. The world have experienced every two millenia universal eclipse and lost its social organization. When the darkenss fall the reason for this cyclical developement is revealed: suddenly the thousands of stars are visible. Most of Asimov's books are pure adventure, good entertaiment solving all kinds of problems of human society and technology. Among his most popular works are the 'Foundation' novels - based loosely on the fall of the Roman Empire - and 'Robot' novels and stories.
The first Foundation trilogy is set in the far future and depicts the period between the fall and the rise a new Galactic Empire. The mysterious inventor of psychohistory, Hari Seldon, has established two Foundations to control this development. The first Foundation, which is public, is given the task of responding to the historic predictions of psychohistory. This seems to work at first.
Asimov paralles the future hisory with analogues of Justinian and Belisarius. The second Foundation, which is secret, copes with the unknown factors, which Hari Seldon could not have anticipated. The grand scheme is thrown away when The Mule comes on the scene. He is a mutant who uses his ability to mainpulate minds by direct force to give history a new direction. According to the science of psychohistory the behaviour of humans in the mass can be predicted by purely statistical means - if the human conglomerate is unaware of the psychohistoric analysis and act randomly. The third part of the trilogy concerns the efforts of the Second Foundation both to get history back on course and to avoid detection and destruction by the First, which perceives it as a rival.
In the 1980s Asimov returned to novels and started the ambitious project to amalgamate the Robot and Foundation sequences into one huge tale. The new books included FOUNDATION'S EDGE (1982), THE ROBOTS OF DAWN (1983), ROBOTS AND EMPIRE (1985), FOUNDATION AND EARTH (1986), PRELUDE TO FOUNDATION (1988) and FORWARD THE FOUNDATION (1993), in which Hari Seldon attempts to build his twin foundations which will preserve human knowledge during the long night of the fall of the Galactic Empire.
Asimov's Robot stories were based on the Three Laws of Robotics, which were introduced in the LIAR! (1941). The laws Asimov formulated with John W. Campbell, Jr.: 1) a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; 2) a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings exept where such orders would conflict the First Law; 3) a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. - These laws dominate many stories, which were collected as I, ROBOT (1950) and THE REST OF THE ROBOTS (1964). They are also basis for the novels THE CAVES OF STEEL (1954) and THE NAKED SUN (1957), sf detective stories set respectively on an overpopulated Earth and barely populated colony world.
Asimov published over 300 books from science fiction to popular science and history. His autobiography, IN MEMORY YET GREEN (1979) and IN JOY STILL FELT (1980) give a detailed picture of the emormously popular author. He is considered to be one of the three grand masters of science fiction with Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein.
SEE ALSO: J.R.R. Tolkien
Janet Asimov (Opal Jepson) (1926-)
Isaac Asimov married in 1973 writer and psychoanalyst Janet Opal Jepson, who had published her early works under the name J.O. Jepson. She started to publish science fiction in the 1970, most of it for children. Among her books are The Second Experiment (1974), The Last Immortal (1980), Laughing Space (anthology, 1982), The Mysterious Cure, and Other Stories of Pshrinks Anonymous (1985), and Mind Transfer (1988). In collaboration with Isaac Asimov she started in 1983 the Norby Chronicles for young readers, which depicted adventures of a robot.
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
Mazagine was founded by Davis Magazines and started to appear quaterly from 1977, monthly from 1979 and 4-weekly from 1981. IASFM was success from the start and its stories have won extraordinary high number of awards. Its title changed in 1992 to Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, when the magazine was sold to new publisher.
Selected bibliography / novels and short stories:
Memoirs:
Non-fiction: