Isaac asimov works
Asimov uses Galactic Empire to depict the collapse of the Roman Empire The text is Asimov's most anthologized story, and was reprinted several times in the following decades.
I, Robot is not exactly a novel in the traditional sense. And yet, it is something more than a mere collection of loosely connected short stories as well. In addition to the recurrence of certain characters, the unifying aspect that maintains the He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his writing, Opus , Opus , and Opus Asimov and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during Star Trek's initial launch in the late 60s.
Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to TV Guide claiming despite its inaccuracies, that Star Trek was a fresh and intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained friends afterward, with Asimov even serving as an adviser on a number of Star Trek projects.
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Much of Asimov's fiction dealt with themes of paternalism. His first robot story, "Robbie," concerned a robotic nanny. Lenny deals with the capacity of robopsychologist Susan Calvin to feel maternal love towards a robot whose positronic brain capacities are those of a 3-year-old. As the robots grew more sophisticated, their interventions became more wide-reaching and subtle.
In "Evidence," the story revolves around a candidate who successfully runs for office who may be a robot masquerading as a human. In "The Evitable Conflict," the robots run humanity from behind the scenes, acting as nannies to the whole species. Later, in The Robots of Dawn and 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.
A non-robot, time travel novel, The End of Eternity, features a similar conflict and resolution. The significance of the Zeroth Law is that it outweighs and supersedes all other Laws of Robotics: If a robot finds himself in a situation whereby he must murder one or more humans a direct violation of the First Law of Robotics in order to protect all of humanity and preserve the Zeroth Law , then the robot's positronic programming will require him to commit murder for humanity's sake.
In The Foundation Series which did not originally have robots , a scientist implements a semi-secret plan to create a new galactic empire over the course of 1, 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 s, the Second Foundation was depicted as benign protectors of humanity.
When he revisited the series in the s, he made the paternalistic themes even more explicit.
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Foundation's Edge introduced the planet Gaia, based on the Gaia hypothesis that all aspects of the earth, living and non-living, are part of a single system. Every animal, plant, and mineral on Gaia participated in a shared consciousness, forming a single super-mind working together for the greater good. Gaia is one of Asimov's best attempts at exploring the possibility of a collective awareness, and is developed further in Nemesis, in which the planet Erythro, composed primarily of prokaryotic life, has a mind of its own and seeks communion with human beings.
Foundation and Earth introduces robots to the Foundation universe.
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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 in order 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 in twentieth century America , such as addressing robots as "boy.
One hero is Bel Arvardan, an upper-class Galactic archaeologist who must overcome his prejudices. The other is Joseph Schwartz, a year-old twentieth century American who had emigrated from Europe, where his people were persecuted. 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, educating the reader by introducing early in the story any science or technology involved in the solution. His fiction often centers around scenes that are essentially debates, in which a rational argument is seen to carry the day.
One of the most common criticisms of Asimov's fiction work is that his "stories" are merely thinly veiled arguments, devoid of compelling characters or action. Except for two stories—"Liar! 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….
Isaac asimov biography
The robot stories—and, as a matter of fact, almost all Asimov fiction—play themselves on a relatively bare stage. Gunn observes that there are some notable exceptions in which Asimov's style rises to the demands of the situation; he cites the climax of "Liar! Sharply-drawn characters occur at key junctures of his storylines: Susan Calvin in "Liar!
Asimov adapted this criticism into one of his own works. In the Hugo Award-winning novella, "Gold," Asimov describes an author who has one of his books The Gods Themselves adapted into a "compu-drama," essentially photo-realistic computer animation. The director criticizes the fictionalized Asimov "Gregory Laborian" for having an extremely non-visual style, making it difficult to adapt his work.
The author explains that he relies on ideas and dialogue rather than description to get his points across. Other criticism includes a lack of strong female characters in his early work, and a failure of his work to "age" well. Some details of Asimov's imaginary future technology as he described in the s and s are outdated.
He described powerful robots and computers from the distant future as still using punch cards or punched tape and engineers using slide rules. It is part of an overall charge of not enough social complexity. In his autobiographical writings he acknowledges this, and responds by pointing to inexperience. In the August 25, , edition, the Washington Post 's "Book World" section reports addresses some of these issues in Robots and Empire as follows:.
In , Asimov's humans were stripped-down masculine portraits of Americans from , 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. There are some exceptions, as in The Naked Sun , which address social issues as a core part of its central setting and motivation, depicts genetic engineering in the guise of eugenics as a fundamental part of that society.
Totally artificial birth, although not specifically cloning, is the aim of the leaders of the society, and the entire story is used to make the point that too much order is ultimately a stagnant dead end to be avoided. Another criticism is that some of his stories also have occasional internal contradictions; names and dates given in The Foundation Series do not always agree with one another.
Some such errors are no doubt deliberate, his characters make mistakes since in Asimov stories characters are seldom fully informed about their own situations. Asimov's first short story to be sold, "Marooned Off Vesta," was published in Amazing Stories in Years later, he published his first book in , the sci-fi novel Pebble in the Sky —the first in a line of titles that would mark a highly prolific writing career.
The narrative would be adapted for a blockbuster starring Will Smith decades later. Asimov would later be credited with coming up with the term "robotics. The year saw the release of another seminal work, Foundation , a novel that looked at the end of the Galactic Empire and a statistical method of predicting outcomes known as "psychohistory.
Asimov was also known for writing books on a wide variety of subjects outside of science fiction, taking on topics like astronomy, biology, math, religion and literary biography. He spent most of his time in solitude, working on manuscripts and having to be persuaded by family to take breaks and vacations.
Isaac asimov famous works: Isaac Asimov (/ ˈæzɪmɒv / AZ-im-ov; [b][c] c. January 2, [a] – April 6, ) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. [2].
By December , he had written books, ultimately writing nearly Asimov died in New York City on April 6, , at the age of 72, from heart and kidney failure. He had dealt privately with a diagnosis of AIDS, which he'd contracted from a blood transfusion during bypass surgery. He was survived by two children and his second wife, Janet Jeppson.
Many of Asimov's early writings were short stories published in cheap science fiction and fantasy magazines. Years later, most of them were collected and republished as collections. Asimov made a list of 15 of his science fiction books, which he advised should be read in this order:. Numbers 1—5 are 'Robot' books; 6—8 are 'Galacticos Empire' books; 9—15 are Foundation series books.
Asimov's novels have influenced science fiction on television and movie. Especially his ' Three Laws of Robotics ' is a lasting contribution to our thinking. Although ethnically a Jew , Asimov was an atheist :. When he had heart surgery in , he received blood infected with HIV. He developed AIDS , and died of the effects of the medical condition in His widow did not speak of this until years later.
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