Isaac Asimov

Copyright Michael D. Robbins 2006

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Isaac Asimov—Prolific Writer in the Fields of Science and Science Fiction

January 2, 1920, Petrobichi, Russia, 2:00 PM, 3:10 PM, 6:00 PM, LMT. (Source: 2:00 PM speculative per Marc Penfield; 3:10 PM speculative per MDR; a 6:00 PM time has also been speculated) Died, April 6, 1992, New York, NY, USA.           

(Speculative Ascendants, Gemini, Cancer and Leo; Sun in Capricorn; Moon in Taurus; Mercury in Sagittarius; Venus in Scorpio; Mars in Libra; Jupiter conjunct Neptune in Leo, with Neptune conjunct the speculative IC; Uranus in the last degree of Aquarius; Pluto in Cancer) A later time of birth is also reasonably possible, giving a Leo Ascendant, imaginative Neptune rising with expansive Jupiter in egoistic Leo near by, and factual Saturn in Virgo in H3. Even a Cancer Ascendant is justifiable, placing expansive Jupiter and imaginative Neptune in the third house of the writer, indicating his passion for wholeness and completeness, and explaining some of the irrational fears to which Asimov was reputedly prone.  

Isaac Asimov was a polymath—a versatile and multi-talented intellectual genius, whose sites were set (Mercury in Sagittarius) so it would seem, upon achieving the summit of materialistic knowledge. He began his career in the hard sciences, in keeping with the fifth ray components of his nature. His scope, however, was potentially too great to be confined by any one area of knowledge (note the “splash” pattern made by his planets once the asteroids and other points are removed for the sake of clarity). His intellectual attainments increased until they became staggering; he wrote about five hundred volumes on a great variety of subjects—science, science fiction, literary criticism. He had the speculative, far-ranging mind so often found with Mercury in Sagittarius. Gemini on the Ascendant would fit a great and prolific writer. Leo Ascending would fit with his appearance and his role of illuminator and teacher—also the sense of intellectual pride (perhaps justified) radiated by the Mensa society (reflective of the intellectual pride often associated with the third ray).. Cancer Ascending would fit his desire to incorporate the entire field of knowledge within his purview.          

While the Ascending sign must remain, at this point, speculative, the combination of Capricorn and the third ray (reinforced by the fourth and fifth rays) need not. Capricorn and the third ray give the peak of intellectual attainment.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.

Early in my school career, I turned out to be an incorrigible disciplinary problem. I could understand what the teacher was saying as fast as she could say it, I found time hanging heavy, so I would occasionally talk to my neighbor. That was my great crime, I talked.

I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending.

If I could trace my origins to Judas Maccabaeus or King David, that would not add one inch to my stature. It may well be that many East European Jews are descended from Khazars, I may be one of them. Who knows? And who cares?

In 1936, I first wrote science fiction. It was a long-winded attempt at writing an endless novel...which died. I remember one sentence, 'Whole forests stood sere and brown in midsummer.'. That was the first Asimovian science-fiction sentence.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

True literacy is becoming an arcane art and the United States is steadily dumbing down.

Until I became a published writer, I remained completely ignorant of books on how to write and courses on the subject...they would have spoiled my natural style; made me observe caution; would have hedged me with rules.

What I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of Robotics. What I want to be remembered for is no one book, or no dozen books. Any single thing I have written can be paralleled or even surpassed by something someone else has done. However, my total corpus for quantity, quality and variety can be duplicated by no one else. That is what I want to be remembered for", September 20, 1973

A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.

All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men.

And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.

Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.

From my close observation of writers...they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.

I don't believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.

I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right.

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once.

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.

Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

American author and biochemist, a highly successful and prolific writer of science fiction and of science books for the layperson. He published about 500 volumes.

Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russia. His family immigrated to the U.S. when he was three years old and settled in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was graduating from Columbia University in 1939 and taking a Ph.D. there in 1948. He then joined the faculty of Boston University, with which he remained associated thereafter.
Asimov began contributing stories to science-fiction magazines in 1939 and in 1950 published his first book, Pebble in the Sky and his first science book, a biochemistry text written with two colleagues, in 1953.

Asimov turned to writing full time in 1958. He authored some 500 books for young and adult readers, extending beyond science and science fiction to include mystery stories, humor, history, and several volumes on the Bible and Shakespeare.

His trilogy of novels, known as The Foundation Trilogy (1951-53) , Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation (1951-53), which recounts the collapse and rebirth of a vast interstellar empire in the universe of the future, is his most famous work of science fiction. In the short-story collection I, Robot (1950), he developed a set of ethics for robots and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers' treatment of the subject. Among his best-known science fiction works are the sequel of The Foundation Trilogy, Foundation's Edge (1982), wrote 30 years later; The Naked Sun (1957); The Gods Themselves (1972). Among his major science books are the Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1964; rev. 1982) and Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984), a recent revision of his widely acclaimed Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1960). Later works include Foundation and Earth (1986); Prelude to Foundation (1988); and Forward the Foundation (1992). A two-volume autobiography, In Memory Yet Green, appeared in 1979

January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992, was a Russian-born American author and biochemist, a highly successful and exceptionally prolific writer best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation Series, which he later combined with two of his other series, the Galactic Empire Series and Robot series. He also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as a great amount of non-fiction. Asimov wrote or edited over 500 volumes and an estimated 90,000 letters or postcards, and he has works in every major category of the Dewey Decimal System except Philosophy. Asimov was by general consensus a master of the science-fiction genre and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, was considered to be one of the "Big Three" science-fiction writers during his lifetime.

Asimov was born around January 2, 1920 (his date of birth for official purposes—the precise date is not certain) in Petrovichi shtetl of Smolensk Oblast, RSFSR (now Russia) to Anna Rachel Berman Asimov and Judah Asimov, a Jewish family of millers. They emigrated to the United States when he was three years old; since the parents always tried to speak English with little Isaac, he actually never learned Russian. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, he taught himself to read at the age of five. His parents owned a candy store and everyone in the family was expected to work in it. He saw science fiction magazines in the store and began reading them. In his mid-teens, he began to write his own stories and soon was selling them to pulp magazines.

He graduated from Columbia University in 1939 and took a Ph.D. in chemistry there in 1948. He then joined the faculty of Boston University, with which he remained associated thereafter, but in a non-teaching capacity. The university ceased to pay him a salary in 1958, by which time his income from writing already exceeded his income from his academic duties. Asimov remained on the faculty as an associate professor, being promoted in 1979 to full professor, and his personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at Boston University's Mugar Memorial Library, where they consume 464 boxes on 71 meters of shelf space. In 1985, he became President of the American Humanist Association and remained in that position until his death in 1992; his successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

He married Gertrude Blugerman on July 26, 1942, with whom he had two children, David (b. 1951) and Robyn (b. 1955). After an extended separation, they were divorced in 1973, and Asimov married Janet O. Jeppson later that year.

Asimov died on April 6, 1992. He was survived by his second wife, Janet, and his children from his first marriage. Ten years after his death, Janet Asimov's edition of Isaac's autobiography, It's Been a Good Life, revealed that his death was caused by AIDS; he had contracted HIV from an infected blood transfusion during heart bypass surgery in 1983. The actual cause of death was heart and renal failure as complications of AIDS. Janet Asimov claims that Isaac's doctors encouraged them not to reveal his illness, while the doctors claim it was Janet herself who wanted to keep it secret (see [1]).

Isaac Asimov was humanist and a rationalist. He did not oppose genuine religious conviction in others but was against superstitious or unfounded beliefs. He was afraid of flying, only doing so twice in his entire life. Asimov was also a claustrophile; that is, he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces.

Asimov was a progressive on most political issues, and a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party. In a television interview in the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy at what he saw as an irrationalist tack taken by many progressive political activists from the late 1960s onwards. His defense of civil applications of nuclear power even after the Three Mile Island incident damaged his relations with some on the left. (Ironically, the New York Times has recently noted that "some prominent environmentalists are having second thoughts about nuclear power" ('No Nukes,' No More) and reported that "several of the nation's most prominent environmentalists have gone public with the message that nuclear power, long taboo among environmental advocates, should be reconsidered as a remedy for global warming" (quoted in Environmental neo-con job?).) He issued many appeals for population control reflecting the perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich. In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York on the shrinking tax base caused by middle class flight to the suburbs. His last non-fiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as global warming and the destruction of the ozone layer.

Asimov's career can be divided into several time periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun. Following that, he greatly increased his production of non-fiction, consequently publishing little science fiction. Over the next quarter century, he would write only four science fiction novels. Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of Foundation's Edge. From then until his death, Asimov would publish many sequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated.
In his own view, Asimov believed that his most enduring contributions would be the Three Laws of Robotics and the Foundation Series (see Yours, , p. 329). Furthermore, the Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing the words positronic, psychohistory and robotics into the English language. The first of these words applies to an entirely fictional technology, while the second is frequently used in a different sense than Asimov employed; however, robotics continues in widespread use with essentially Asimov's original definition.

Science fiction

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, ostensibly dedicated to popular science, but with Asimov having complete editorial freedom. The first of the F&SF columns appeared in November of 1958, and they followed uninterrupted thereafter, with 399 entries, until Asimov's terminal illness took its toll. 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.

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 1300-page volume in 1981. Replete 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.

Asimov also wrote several essays on the social contentions of his day, 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.

Never entirely lacking wit and humor, towards 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. 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'", but with his full name prominently displayed on the cover.

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 shortly after his death. It's Been a Good Life (2002), edited by Janet, is a condensed version of his three autobiographies.

Literary themes: Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Much of Asimov's fiction dealt with themes of paternalism. His first robot story, "Robbie", concerned a robotic nanny. As the robots grew more sophisticated, their interventions became more wide-reaching and subtle. In "Evidence", a robot masquerading as a human successfully runs for elective office. In "The Evitable Conflict", the robots run humanity from behind the scenes, acting as nannies to the whole species.

Later, in Robots and Empire, a robot develops what he calls the Zeroth Law of Robotics, which states that "A robot may not injure humanity, nor, through 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 novel, The End of Eternity, features a similar conflict and resolution.

In The Foundation Series (which did not originally have robots), a scientist implements a semi-secret plan to create a perfect society over the course of 1000 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 paternalistic 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 must decide whether or not to allow the development of Galaxia, a larger version of Gaia, encompassing the entire galaxy.

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, perhaps the reverse of paternalism, 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 sixty. One hero is Bel Arvardan, an upper-class Galactic archeologist who must overcome his prejudices. The other is Joseph Schwartz, a 62-year-old twentieth-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" 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.

One of the most common impressions of Asimov's fiction work is that his writing style is extremely unornamental. In 1980, SF scholar James Gunn wrote of I, Robot that
Except for two stories—"Liar!" and "Evidence"—they are not stories in which character plays a significant part. Virtually all plot develops in conversation with little if any action. Nor is there a great deal of local color or description of any kind. The dialogue is, at best, functional and the style is, at best, transparent. [...] The robot stories—and, as a matter of fact, almost all Asimov fiction—play themselves on a relatively bare stage.

This description applies well to a large proportion of Asimov's fiction, including that written after 1980. Gunn observes that there are places where Asimov's style rises to the demands of the situation; he cites the climax of "Liar!" as an example. One should not overlook the sharply drawn characters which occur at key junctures of his storylines: in addition to Susan Calvin in "Liar!" and "Evidence", we find Arkady Darell in Second Foundation, Elijah Baley in The Caves of Steel and Hari Seldon in the Foundation prequels. (In Forward the Foundation, Seldon becomes a partial mirror of Asimov himself.)

Asimov was also criticised for the lack of sex and aliens in his science fiction. Asimov once explained that his reluctance to write about aliens came from an incident early in his career when Astounding's editor John Campbell rejected one of his early science fiction stories because the alien characters were portrayed as superior to the humans. He decided that, rather than write weak alien characters, he would not write about aliens at all. Nevertheless, in response to these criticisms he wrote The Gods Themselves, which contains aliens, sex, and alien sex. Asimov said that of all his writings, he was most proud of the middle section of The Gods Themselves.

Others have criticised him for a lack of strong female characters in his early work. In his autobiographical writings, he acknowledges this, and responds by pointing to inexperience. His later novels, written with more female characters but in essentially the same prose style as his early SF stories, brought this matter to a wider audience. For example, the 25 August 1985 Washington Post's "Book World" section reports of Robots and Empire as follows:

In 1940, Asimov's humans were stripped-down masculine portraits of Americans from 1940, and they still are. His robots were tin cans with speedlines like an old Studebaker, and still are; the Robot tales depended on an increasingly unworkable distinction between movable and unmovable artificial intelligences, and still do. In the Asimov universe, because it was conceived a long time ago, and because its author abhors confusion, there are no computers whose impact is worth noting, no social complexities, no genetic engineering, aliens, arcologies, multiverses, clones, sin or sex; his heroes (in this case R. Daneel Olivaw, whom we first met as the robot protagonist of The Caves of Steel and its sequels) feel no pressure of information, raw or cooked, as the simplest of us do today; they suffer no deformation from the winds of the Asimov future, because it is so deeply and strikingly orderly.

Other than the books by Gunn and Patrouch, there is a relative dearth of "literary" criticism on Asimov (particularly when compared to the sheer volume of his output). Cowart and Wymer's Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) gives a possible reason:

His words do not easily lend themselves to traditional literary criticism because he has the habit of centering his fiction on plot and clearly stating to his reader, in rather direct terms, what is happening in his stories and why it is happening. In fact, most of the dialogue in an Asimov story, and particularly in the [Foundation] trilogy, is devoted to such exposition. Stories that clearly state what they mean in unambiguous language are the most difficult for a scholar to deal with because there is little to be interpreted.

Although he prided himself on an unornamented prose style, he also enjoyed giving his longer stories complicated narrative structures, often by arranging chapters in non-chronological ways. Some readers have been put off by this, complaining that the nonlinearity is not worth the trouble and adversely impacts the clarity of the story. For example, the first third of The Gods Themselves begins with Chapter 6, then backtracks to fill in earlier material [5]. (In fairness, one should note that John Campbell advised Asimov to begin his stories as late in the plot as possible. This tidbit of advice helped Asimov create "Reason," one of the early Robot stories. See In Memory Yet Green for details of that time period.) Asimov's tendency to contort his timelines is perhaps most apparent in his later novel Nemesis, in which one group of characters live in the "present" and another group starts in the "past", beginning fifteen years earlier and gradually moving toward the time period of the first group.

John Jenkins, who has reviewed the vast majority of Asimov's written output, once observed laconically, It has been pointed out that most sf writers since the 1950s have been affected by Asimov, either modeling their style on his or deliberately avoiding anything like his style.

• Best Known As: Prolific writer of popular science and science fiction
born in the former Soviet Union, but grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He taught biochemistry at Boston University until he retired in 1958 to become a full-time writer. Asimov had been publishing short stories since the late 1930s, and in 1952 published his first novel. The author of the classic I, Robot series and The Foundation Trilogy, Asimov wrote more than 400 books and won every major science fiction award. He also wrote popular books and essays on science and technology, earning him the nickname "The Great Explainer."

According to the FAQ, the author died of "heart and kidney failure, which were complications of the HIV infection he contracted from a transfusion of tainted blood during his December 1983 triple-bypass operation." HIV was not revealed as the cause of his death until 2002, when his widow Janet published the memoir It's Been a Good Life.