The world’s most prolific writer

A tribute to Isaac Asimov

Why Asimov?

If you have to ask that then you are no science fiction fan. Isaac Asimov is probably one of the most famous, and influential writers of the 20^th century. He wrote over three hundred books, won the Hugo award three times and the Nebula award once and also invented the three laws of robotics.

Isaac was born in 1920 in Russia, near to Smolensk. Three years later his parents brought him to America where they settled in Brooklyn. At the age of eight he gained was citizenship papers and developed his voracious appetite for reading. By the age of sixteen, thanks to his remarkable memory he had finished high school and was destined to move on to Columbia University to study chemistry (his father had wanted him to be a doctor but he did not want to move in that direction).

On the literary front his first story, Marooned off Vesta, was published in Amazing Stories in 1939 and he was off and running. It was during these early years of Isaac’s writing life that he formed the lifelong friendship with one of the greats of the golden age of Science Fiction writing, John W Campbell. Thanks to Campbell's advice over the coming years, Isaac became a regular contributor to the science fiction magazines including Astounding, Astonishing stories, Super Science stories and Galaxy. From then onwards it was all upwards.

I first discovered Asimov many years ago, I picked up a collection of his short stories and that was that, I was hooked. The book I brought was the Early Asimov and covered obviously his earliest work, each story was also accompanied by a short depiction of his life at the time, which were often as entertaining as the tales themselves. What I loved about Asimov was his optimism, especially in these days of distrust and hatred. He was looking forward with a vision that man would solve all his problems in the future and reach for the stars. This has not happened yet, but we can still hope.

With the hundreds of books by the master. He is well known for the foundation series of books, which is in the process of being developed for a motion picture now (of course these days that means nothing, but we live in hope). Asimov is probably most famous for his robot stories though, where he developed the three laws of robotics.

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm

A robot must obey the orders given to it by a human being except where it would conflict with the first law

A robot must protect his own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first and second laws

Asimov developed these because he was tired of the old cliché of scientist builds robot, robot turns on scientists plots that littered the early twentieth century science fiction. He imagined that man would indeed build robots to replace the human workforce, but that they would have safeguards to protect us. Much the same way as every other technological invention has built in safeguards.

Asimov also wrote the Bicentennial man, which has recently been made in a lacklustre film with Robin Williams and The Caves of Steel and the Naked Sun, which deal with a robot hating detective trying to solve a murder. He was also an accomplished editor and wrote many non fiction books.

So there you have it, a small tribute to a great of science fiction. The man who influenced countless people and did more for his favoured genre than most people will ever do. The world lost one of it’s true greats when Isaac died in 1992, at the relatively young age of 72. His name will live on for a lot longer.

BC