Isaac Asimov Essay

Isaac Asimov, the pre-eminent popular-science author of the day and for more than than 40 days one of the best and best-kn feature carry throughrs of science manufacturing, died yesterday at New York Univer taunty Hospital. He was 72 long time old and lived in Manhattan. He died of heart and kidney failure, said his brother, Stanley. Mr. Asimov was amazingly prolific, theme nearly 500 t excruciate records on a wide stretch of subjects, from kit and caboodle for preschoolers to college text watchwords. He was perhaps best known for his science illustration and was a pioneer in elevating the genre from pulp-magazine adventure to a more dexterous level that dealt with sociology, hi floor, mathematics and science. scarcely he also wrote mysteries, as salutary as critically acclaimed books most the Bible, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, limericks, humor, Shakespeare, Gilbert and Sullivan, ancient and modern history, and numerous other subjects.Mr. Asimovs number on e book, Pebble in the Sky (Ballantine), a science- apologue novel, was publish in 1950. His maiden 100 books took him 237 months, or almost 20 years, until October 1969, to write. His aid 100, a milestone he reached in March 1979, took 113 months, or closely 9 1/2 years a rate of more than 10 books a year. His third 100 took only 69 months, until declination 1984, or less than 6 years. Writing is more fun than ever, he said in a 1984 interview. The longer I write, the easier it gets. He one time explained how he came to write Asimovs Guide to Shakespeare (Crown). It began, he said, with a book callight-emitting diode wrangling of intelligence. Science guide to Words on the Map, he remarked, which took me to The Greeks, which led me to The Roman Republic, The Roman Empire, The Egyptians, The Near East, The Dark Ages, The Shaping of England and then Words From History.It was an easy jump to Words in Genesis, which brought on Words From the Exodus. That led me to Asimovs Gu ide to the Old Testament, and then The New Testament. So what was leftover except Shakespeare? His usual r placeine was to awake at 6 A.M., sit down at the typewriter by 730 and work until 10 P.M. In In Memory Yet Green, the offshoot volume of his autobiography, create in 1979, he explained how he became a compulsive writer. His Russian-born buzz off own a succession of candy stores in Brooklyn that were open from 6 A.M. to 1 A.M. septette days a week. Young Isaac got up at 6 oclock whatsoever morning to deliver papers and rush home from school to help out in the store every afterwardsnoon. If he was even a few minutes late, his father squall at him for being a folyack, Yiddish for sluggard. Even more than 50 years later, he wrote It is a point of pride with me that though I invite an alarm clock, I never set it, but get up at 6 A.M. anyway. I am still showing my father Im not a folyack.He Learns to Read, Then Teaches sis Isaac Asimov was born Jan. 2, 1920, in the Soviet Union, near Smolensk, the son of Judah and Anna Rachel Berman Asimov. He was brought to the coupled States in 1923 and was naturalized in 1928. He taught himself to read before he was 5 years old, using the signs on his Brooklyn street. A couple of years later, with a little help from his father, he taught himself to read Yiddish. When he was 7, he taught his younger sister to read. He skipped several grades and authoritative a high-school parchment when he was 15. After discovering science fiction on the magazine rack in his fathers store and overcoming his fathers objections to fanciful subject matter he tried writing science fiction himself and interchange his first story when he was 18. The story, Marooned Off Vesta, ran in the October 1938 issue of Amazing Stories.Three years later, in 1941, he sold a story called Nightfall to Astounding Science Fiction, then the covert magazine in the field. It was edited by John W. Campbell Jr., whose ability to recollect talented wr iters was largely responsible for what is considered the Golden Age of science fiction in the 1930s and 40s. Almost 30 years after Nightfall was published, the Science Fiction Writers of America voted it the best science-fiction short story ever written. Astounding Science paid a cent a word, Mr. Asimov once recalled. So for a 12,000-word story I expected $120. I got a check for $150 and image Mr. Campbell had do a mistake. But when Mr. Asimov called to tell him, he said the story had seemed so good to him he gave me a bonus of one-quarter cent a word. Mr. Asimov graduated from Columbia University in 1939 with a bachelor of science degree, and earned an M.A. in 1941 and a Ph.D. in chemistry thither in 1948.The next year, he accepted an say from Boston Universitys School of Medicine to teach biochemistry. I didnt feel impelled to tell them that Id never had any biochemistry, he recalled in a 1969 interview. By 1951 I was writing a textbook on biochemistry, and I final examination ly realized the only affaire I really wanted to be was a writer. He was make an associate professor of biochemistry in 1955 and a professor in 1979, although he stopped teaching in 1958 and only occasionally went guts to the university to lecture. A Science Fiction Of Verve and Clarity Mr. Asimovs science-fiction novels and stories won many an(prenominal) awards five Hugos, given by the fans, and three Nebula Awards, given by his workfellow writers. His base Trilogy (all published by Doubleday) which takes place in a future(a) galactic empire and consists of Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952) and Second Foundation (1953) was given a Hugo in 1966 as Best All-Time Science-Fiction Series.Among his nonfictional prose works, Asimovs New Guide to Science is considered one of the best books rough science for the layman. Reviewing Foundations bite (Doubleday), a sequel to the trilogy and the first of Mr. Asimovs books to make the New York Times best-seller list, the c ritic Gerald Jonas said in The New York Times Book Review in 1982 He writes frequently better than he did 33 years ago yet he has lost none of the verve he brought to this series when he and the coltsfoot were much younger. What more could one ask? Foundations Edge won a Hugo in 1983 as the best science-fiction novel of the year. In recent years, Mr. Asimov wrote Foundation and Earth (1986) and Prelude to Foundation (1988). A final novel, Forward the Foundation, is to be published by Bantam Books later this year. Mr. Asimov himself made no great claims for his work. I make no effort to write poetically or in a high literary style, he said in 1984. I try only to write clearly and I have the very good fortune to think clearly so that the writing comes out as I think, in able shape.I never read Hemingway or Fitzgerald or Joyce or Kafka, he once wrote. To this day I am a stranger to 20th-century fiction and poetry, and I have no doubt that it shows in my writing. No Typist or Agen t, And No Airplanes He wrote his first drafts on his typewriter, and short articles and final drafts on a word processor, and he rewrote everything only once. Its not out of conceit, he said. But I have lots of stuff Im committed to write and if I linger lovingly I wont be able to write at all. non everything, however, fell into place easily. He once did a childrens book in a day, but the Shakespeare book took two years. The book he considered his favorite, Murder at the A.B.A. (1976), a mystery novel in which he himself was a character, took seven weeks The Gods Themselves (1972), a science-fiction novel that won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, took seven months.I do all my own typing, my own research, answer my own mail, Mr. Asimov once said. I dont even have a literary agent. This way there are no arguments, no instructions, no misunderstandings. I work every day. Sunday is my best day no mail, no telephones. Writing is my only interest. Even speaking is an interruption. Al though he wrote close space travel through countless universes and light years, Mr. Asimov himself refused to go away. Isaac says that he loves to fly into space and span the galaxies, the editor Ben Bova once remarked. But only in his imagination. Among Mr. Asimovs other well-known science-fiction works were I, Robot (1950), in which he invented his famous Three Laws of Robotics, which govern the relation of robots to their human masters robots may not injure a human or, by inaction, allow a human to be harmed robots must obey humans orders unless doing so conflicts with the first law robots must protect their own existence unless doing so conflicts with the first two laws.Robot and galactic-empire themes eventually expanded and intertwined in 14 novels. concealed of Success Its All in the Genes He also wrote many nonfiction works and magazine articles on a wide range of subjects and was the editorial director of a magazine named after him Isaac Asimovs Science Fiction Magazin e for which he wrote the editorials in each issue. He received the James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society in 1965 and the American Association for the Advancement of Science-Westinghouse Science Writing Award in 1967. belatedly Mr. Asimov said he had had a prostate operation and was cutting back on his writing. He suspended his monthly column in day-dream and Science Fiction magazine, to which he had contributed some 400 columns and articles over 33 years.Writing 10 or more books a year was sample procedure for Mr. Asimov, and he continued his busy pace after a heart attack in 1977 and triple bypass surgery in 1983. I have been fortunate to be born with a busy and efficient brain, with a capacity for clear thought and an ability to stray that thought into words, he once remarked. None of this is to my credit. I am the beneficiary of a lucky break in the genetic sweepstakes. Mr. Asimov once told an interviewer about sadly contemplating death and the end of consc ious thought. But, he said, he cheered himself with the thought that I dont have to worry about that, because there isnt an idea Ive ever had that I havent put down on paper.