(1920–1992)
Isaac Asimov was not as skillful a writer, in terms
of literary ability, as many of his contemporaries,
did not rival them in popular appeal until quite
late in his career, and was less prolific within
the genre than many other writers. However, the
ideas contained in his early fiction may have
had more direct impact on other authors than
the ideas of anyone else within the genre. His
FOUNDATION SERIES was voted the most popular
series in the history of the field and has become
the touchstone for all other novels about galactic
empires, and the operating rules for his Robot
series have been adopted by many other writers
for their own purposes.
Born in Russia, Asimov became a naturalized
U.S. citizen as a child, was active in science fiction
fandom while pursuing a degree in chemistry,
eventually acquiring a Ph.D. He taught biochemistry for several years before turning to full-time
writing in 1958. The overwhelming majority of his
more than 200 books are nonfiction, primarily popularizing various aspects of science, but he also
wrote mysteries and humor. Most of his significant
genre fiction came very early in his career, which
started with his first short story sale in 1939. Several dozen more stories appeared over the next
decade, including the first of the robot stories and
the longer pieces that would eventually be combined into the first three books in the Foundation
series. His single most famous piece of fiction,
“NIGHTFALL,” appeared in 1941 and was later
turned into an unfortunately bad film. The setting
is a planet where night falls only once in every several generations, during which brief periods fear
leads to madness and the collapse of civilization,
requiring a rebirth during the next cycle of light.
Asimov appeared in book form with three titles in 1950. I, ROBOT is a collection of the earliest
robot stories. 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. It uses a common
genre theme—that a single individual can change
the course of history—but in this case the protagonist is an ordinary person acting as a catalyst for
events beyond his control, rather than a largerthan-life hero who directs things consciously. The
Stars, Like Dust (also published as The Rebellious
Stars) also deals with intrigue within a similar empire, but more traditionally and less successfully;
The Currents of Space (1952) uses a very similar
setting and plot to much better effect. Foundation
(1951, also published as The 1,000-Year Plan) contained the first portion of the saga of Hari Seldon,
a psychohistorian planning for the collapse of the
human empire. The saga was continued in Foundation and Empire (1952, also known as The Man
Who Upset the Universe) and Second Foundation
(1953).
A second sequence of novels incorporated elements of Asimov’s two major series—robots and a
galactic empire. (Later in his career Asimov would
retroactively adopt them into a common future
history of humanity.) The first and best of these
was The Caves of Steel (1954), followed by The
Naked Sun (1957). Both novels are essentially
murder mysteries, and the detectives in both instances are Lije Baley, a human, and his robot partner, R. Daneel Olivaw. The appeal of the stories
comes in part from the cleverly devised setting, a
human culture that has split into two groups, one
of which lives at close quarters because of overpopulation, the other on colony worlds so sparsely settled that their inhabitants cannot long abide the
close proximity of others. The remaining adult
novel from this period was The End of Eternity
(1955). The framework is a now familiar one: An
organization stands independent of time, sending
its agents to prevent alterations of history. Asimov
told the story from the viewpoint of a rogue agent
who tries to manipulate history for the benefit of
the woman he loves.
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. Asimov’s passion for popularizing science
was already evident, and from this point on his fictional output was dramatically reduced in favor of
numerous books on subjects ranging from physics
to chemistry to astronomy. During the 1960s he
produced a significant number of short stories and
published several collections, but wrote no novels
except for the novelization of the film Fantastic
Voyage (1966), wherein he attempted to provide a
reasonable explanation for the scientific flaws in
the original. 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. This book was quite atypical for the
author, who rarely depicted aliens even in his novels of galactic civilizations.
Asimov continued to write shorter pieces of
varying quality throughout the 1970s, including
some very fine stories such as “Waterclap” and
“The BICENTENNIAL MAN,” the latter eventually
adapted as a very underrated movie. Another 10
years would pass before Asimov’s next novel, Foundation’s Edge (1982), which was the first of several
expansions he would provide to his original series;
the others were Robots and Empire (1985), Foundation and Earth (1986), Forward the Foundation
(1993), and a prequel Prelude to Foundation (1988),
none of which measured up to the scope and energy of the original sequence. Robots and Dawn
(1983) was a new adventure featuring Lije Baley
and R. Daneel Olivaw, and also began the merger
of the two previously separate series into a single
timeline.
In 1985, Asimov started another young adult
series in collaboration with his wife, Janet Asimov,
who also wrote as J. O. Jeppson. The Norby stories
feature a self-aware robot who has various adventures, but the series is written down to such a degree that it is of only passing interest to adult
readers. Nemesis (1989), which is not related to
any of the series, is a mild cautionary novel in
which refugees from an overpopulated Earth discover an impending catastrophe. Asimov’s only remaining adult novel during the 1980s was a sequel
to Fantastic Voyage that made a considerable improvement in the scientific rationale but without
providing a more engaging story. 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.”
Asimov’s prose, particularly in the later novels, has been criticized for its tendency to rely too
heavily on dialogue and a tendency to tell things to
the reader rather than show them. The primary
strength of his fiction has always been the ideas it
illustrates, and his readers generally are unconcerned with a lack of literary depth. His short fiction is usually of higher quality than his novels;
among his numerous short story collections are
Earth Is Room Enough (1957), The Early Asimov
(1972), The Bicentennial Man (1976), The Winds of
Change (1973), The Edge of Tomorrow (1985), The
Asimov Chronicles (1990), and Gold (1995).
The enduring appeal of Asimov’s major work
is evident in the number and quality of writers who
have produced expanded versions of his shorter
works, or who have written direct sequels to his
Foundation and Robot series, including Roger
MacBride ALLEN, Greg BEAR, Gregory BENFORD,
David BRIN, Mark Tiedemann, and Robert Silverberg. Asimov was one of the primary shapers of the
form of modern literary science fiction.