98 Fun Facts About Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov was a professor of which subject at Boston University?

Biochemistry was his subject at BU's School of Medicine, but writing came to pay more than the university did, so he stepped back from academic work.

In which country was Asimov born?

Russia was his birthplace, and with no birth record kept in his village, Asimov picked January 2, 1920, as his birthday and celebrated it.

What kind of business did Asimov's parents run in Brooklyn?

A candy store, where his father sold the pulps but banned Isaac from reading them until he argued that science fiction was educational.

Roughly how many books did science fiction writer Isaac Asimov write or edit?

About 500 books came from a man who typed his first drafts at 90 words a minute and kept about 95% of each draft in the final version.

Which word did Asimov coin without realising it was new, in his 1941 story Liar!?

Robotics went on to name a real engineering field, and it is still used with the meaning Asimov gave it in his fiction.

What does Asimov's Second Law require a robot to do?

Obey orders: the Second Law requires it and outranks the Third, so a robot must follow a human command even when obeying will destroy it.

Asimov's First Law bars a robot from injuring a human or, through what, allowing one to come to harm?

Inaction is dropped from the law in Little Lost Robot, because robots kept dragging researchers out of radiation that people could briefly bear but robots could not.

What name did Asimov give the extra law he later placed ahead of the original three?

The Zeroth Law is the duty to protect humanity as a whole, which robots such as Giskard and Daneel came to place above the First Law.

Which fictional science lets Hari Seldon predict the future in the Foundation series?

Psychohistory made young Paul Krugman want to be Hari Seldon, and he turned to economics as the closest real science.

Which historical work inspired the premise of the Foundation series?

Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire shaped Asimov's pitch for one short story, but talks with editor John W. Campbell turned it into a whole series.

Seldon's plan shortens the post-Empire dark age to 1,000 years, from roughly how long?

About 30,000 years of barbarism was the forecast, and because the Empire's fall had too much momentum to stop, Seldon's plan could only nudge events.

Which mutant, whose rise took Hari Seldon's plan by surprise, conquers the Foundation in Asimov's series?

The Mule controls others' emotions, and once he conquers the Foundation, the hidden Second Foundation has to come out of hiding to save the plan.

Which 1982 novel revived Asimov's Foundation series after three decades and won the 1983 Hugo for Best Novel?

Foundation's Edge came about because his publisher approached Asimov in 1981 and persuaded him to return to the series for a fourth novel.

Who plays Hari Seldon in the Apple TV+ adaptation of Foundation?

Jared Harris plays a man the original trilogy shows mostly as a recording, whose image appears in the Time Vault at each crisis to explain what just happened.

Which 1941 Asimov story did a Science Fiction Writers of America poll vote the best science fiction short story?

Nightfall grew from Campbell doubting an Emerson line that people would adore the stars if they appeared one night in a thousand years.

Which 1956 story about entropy did Asimov name as his personal favourite?

The Last Question was so often recalled by fans who had forgotten its title that Asimov learned to recognise it, once naming it before a fan described it.

What is the name of the giant computer that appears in several of Isaac Asimov's stories?

Multivac, in the story Franchise, replaces a national election by picking one voter whose choices it judges representative of the whole country.

In Asimov's robot stories, what job does Susan Calvin hold at US Robots and Mechanical Men?

Chief robopsychologist Susan Calvin shuts down the mind-reading robot in Liar! by showing it that its kindly lies hurt people too, trapping it in a conflict.

What did Asimov call the public's fear of robots?

The Frankenstein complex was the fear Asimov said his Three Laws were invented to answer, so his robots could be built as safe machines.

Which star plays Del Spooner, a Chicago detective who distrusts robots, in the 2004 film I, Robot?

Will Smith's detective came from Hardwired, a murder-mystery script by Jeff Vintar with no Asimov link, which the studio reworked after buying the I, Robot title.

Asimov's detective Elijah Baley and robot R. Daneel Olivaw were introduced in which 1954 novel?

The Caves of Steel set Earth's people in vast domed cities, which the claustrophile Asimov counted the ultimate windowless enclosures.

Which 1972 Asimov novel won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards for Best Novel?

The Gods Themselves was Asimov's reply to critics who said he avoided aliens and sex, with a middle section set among aliens who mate in threes.

Robin Williams starred in the 1999 film of which Asimov robot story?

The Bicentennial Man ends with Andrew having himself made mortal, and he is declared human on his 200th birthday as he dies.

Asimov's novelisation of which 1966 film reached shops before the movie itself?

Fantastic Voyage's script struck Asimov as full of plot holes, so he won permission to rework its shaky science his own way.

Under what pen name did Asimov write the Lucky Starr juvenile novels?

Paul French kept Asimov's name off books meant to launch a TV series, because he feared television would turn them into something awful.

In Pebble in the Sky, what happens to Earth's people at 60?

Execution awaits them at 60 under a custom called the Sixty, bad news for the time-lost hero Joseph Schwartz, who is already 62.

Asimov's first sold story, Marooned Off Vesta, went to which magazine in 1938?

Amazing Stories bought it in October 1938, after Astounding's editor John W. Campbell had turned down Asimov's first few stories.

With Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, Asimov was grouped as one of science fiction's what?

Big Three was the label for Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke, the writers credited with carrying science fiction into its mid-20th-century golden age.

Where was the Clarke–Asimov Treaty on who was the best SF writer negotiated?

In a New York taxi, Clarke and Asimov agreed each was best in his own field, so Clarke dedicated a book to the second-best science-fiction writer.

During World War II Asimov worked as a civilian chemist at which naval facility?

Philadelphia Navy Yard work paused his Columbia PhD, which he finished in 1948, and put him beside fellow writers Robert Heinlein and L. Sprague de Camp.

Isaac Asimov, who feared flying, flew home from which US territory in 1946 after his Army service there?

Hawaii was his Army posting, and his fear of flying meant he seldom travelled great distances afterwards.

Asimov earned a screen credit as 'special science consultant' on which 1979 film?

Star Trek: The Motion Picture brought him in because studio executives doubted a machine could become sentient, and Roddenberry needed his weight to keep the ending.

Asimov contracted HIV from a blood transfusion during what operation in 1983?

Triple bypass surgery infected him through a transfusion, and the cause of his death stayed secret until It's Been a Good Life revealed it ten years on.

After Isaac Asimov died, who took over his syndicated popular-science column in the Los Angeles Times?

His widow, Janet, took it over; the psychiatrist had already co-written ten Norby robot books with him.

Which organisation named Asimov its 1984 honoree of the year and later made him honorary president?

He was honorary president from 1985 until his death and was succeeded by his friend Kurt Vonnegut. He also signed the Humanist Manifesto.

Why did Isaac Asimov first drop out of Mensa?

Members were arrogant about IQ, he felt, yet he rejoined years later and became the society's reluctant honorary vice president.

The Black Widowers, Asimov's fictional dinner-club detectives, were based on which real club?

He wrote 66 Black Widowers stories. He was also a prominent Baker Street Irregular who argued Moriarty's 'Dynamics of an Asteroid' described destroying a planet.

A large crater named after science fiction writer Isaac Asimov lies on which world?

Mars gained its Asimov crater in 2009, because large Martian craters may be named for writers who have added to the lore of Mars.

Isaac Asimov, an atheist, wrote a two-volume guide to which holy book?

The Bible fascinated him though his parents did not press religion on him, and he had only several months of Hebrew school while his father served the local synagogue.

Isaac Asimov joined the fan society of which theatrical songwriting duo?

Gilbert and Sullivan so absorbed him that he wrote a whole book on their comic operas, Asimov's Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan.

What did Asimov regularly write for the magazine named after him?

Editorials were his regular part, and the magazine carrying his name was a success among sf magazines from its first year.

Asimov's 1955 novel about an organisation that edits history is called The End of what?

Eternity is thrown into danger when one of its Eternals, Andrew Harlan, falls in love and breaks its rules to protect her.

Asimov's first Hugo Award, in 1963, was for what?

His science essays for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction earned that special Hugo, given for 'adding science to science fiction'.

Why did Asimov's father spell the surname with an S?

He thought S was said like Z, as in German, and the misspellings his name drew later inspired his story Spell My Name with an S.

Why did Asimov's mother falsify his birth date?

Early school entry was her aim, so she made him older on paper, but once he found out he insisted the records be changed back.

Which Hollywood director bought the film rights to Isaac Asimov's robot story Evidence?

Orson Welles paid $250 for the rights, but no movie ever came of the deal.

Why did Asimov scowl while autographing a book for his future wife?

A kidney stone was tormenting him, so she took him for unpleasant, and when they met again years later he had no memory of her.

Asimov's first 'positronic robot' story, Robbie, was published in 1940 in which magazine?

Super Science Stories ran it as Strange Playfellow, and it became Robbie only when reprinted in I, Robot in 1950.

A copy of Asimov's Foundation trilogy has orbited the Sun since 2018 inside which car?

A Tesla Roadster carries the novels on a small disc designed for long-lasting data storage. The car was the dummy payload on the first Falcon Heavy test flight, with a spacesuited mannequin in the driver's seat.

Asimov's Foundation trilogy beat which fantasy epic to the 1966 Hugo for Best All-Time Series?

The Lord of the Rings was the series Asimov assumed the one-time award had been invented to honour. He said he was stunned when his own trilogy won instead.

Asimov called only two people he had met smarter than himself: Marvin Minsky and which astronomer?

Carl Sagan was one of only two people Asimov ever met whose intellect, he admitted, surpassed his own. Minsky, the other, was an expert in artificial intelligence.

Which verse form did Isaac Asimov write by the hundred, filling several bawdy books from 1975?

Limericks became a late-life hobby for Asimov, who wrote most of the verses in his collections himself. One collection set 144 of his against 144 by the poet John Ciardi.

As a boy, Isaac Asimov dreamed of owning a magazine stand in which enclosed place?

A subway station appealed because Asimov loved small, enclosed spaces. He pictured shutting himself inside the stand to read while the trains rumbled past.

Isaac Asimov shunned planes, but late in life he gave science talks aboard which kind of transport?

Cruise ships were the one kind of travel Asimov came to enjoy. It began in 1972, when he watched the Apollo 17 launch from one, and he later lectured aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2.

Asimov's 1970 two-volume guide explains the history and myths behind every play by which writer?

William Shakespeare's plays are sorted in the guide by setting instead of date, with the Greek, Roman and Italian ones in the first volume and the English plays in the second.

Which style of facial hair became Isaac Asimov's trademark in later life, along with his bolo ties?

Mutton-chop sideburns became so fixed a part of his look that he found old photographs of himself without them hard to believe. The bolo ties arrived after his wife objected to his clip-on bow ties.

Besides English, which language did Isaac Asimov's immigrant parents speak to him as a child?

Yiddish and English were the languages of the Asimov home. His parents kept a third language for private talk they didn't want young Isaac to follow, so he never learned it.

A clerical error kept soldier Isaac Asimov from sailing to atomic bomb tests at which Pacific atoll?

Bikini hosted the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests in 1946. Asimov was dropped from the task force days before it sailed, only because a bureaucratic mix-up had stopped his military allotment.

Which planet, Hari Seldon's adopted home, is the Galactic Empire's capital in Asimov's Foundation?

Trantor is the imperial capital, and Seldon arrives there from his home world of Helicon to present the theory that predicts the Empire's collapse.

Hari Seldon's scholars are exiled to which remote planet on the galaxy's rim in Asimov's Foundation?

Terminus is the planet farthest from the Galactic Centre, with a Latin name meaning a boundary or end. The Empire offers it as a place of exile because it does not want to make Seldon a martyr.

Which hidden colony of telepaths secretly guards Hari Seldon's plan in Asimov's galactic saga?

The Second Foundation was set up by Seldon as a colony of psychologists and mentalics. He hid its whereabouts behind the deliberately obscure phrase 'at Star's End'.

Many chapters of Asimov's Foundation novels open with an extract from which fictional book?

Encyclopedia Galactica is also the project the exiled scholars believe they were sent away to write. It is later revealed as misdirection: the real aim was to gather scientists on one remote world.

Which first mayor outwits the neighbouring kingdoms that threaten Asimov's young Foundation?

Salvor Hardin wins by cunning. When Anacreon attacks with a salvaged Imperial battlecruiser, a secret kill switch his engineers had fitted makes the crew mutiny.

Which Asimov novel sends detective Elijah Baley to Solaria, where meeting face to face is taboo?

The Naked Sun pits Baley's fear of open spaces, bred in Earth's enclosed cities, against a world whose people prefer to meet only by hologram. He insists on interviewing them in person.

Runaround, the first Asimov story to state the Three Laws, strands robot Speedy on which planet?

Mercury is where Speedy gets stuck circling a selenium pool, torn between a casual command and his strengthened urge to protect himself. He seems drunk until a human life is put at risk.

In Asimov's 1941 story Liar!, a manufacturing fault gives the robot Herbie which unexpected ability?

Reading minds is what makes Herbie a liar. Still bound not to hurt humans, he tells people what they hope to hear, especially about romance, and breaks down when confronted with the harm that causes.

In Asimov's The Ugly Little Boy, scientists pull what kind of child out of the past by time travel?

A Neanderthal boy, named Timmie by his nurse, is the experiment's prize. When the firm decides to send him back to make room for its next subject, she chooses to go with him.

In Asimov's The Feeling of Power, a technician stuns a computer-run society by reviving which skill?

Arithmetic on paper is hailed as a breakthrough and named Graphitics. The military then seizes it, planning to swap costly computer-guided craft for cheaper crewed ones.

Asimov earned an honorary doctorate by putting a foot in a bucket to pass which college requirement?

A swimming test was a graduation rule Asimov could never have met, because he never learned to swim. The dean settled for one foot in a bucket of water, decades after his student days.

Which Ivy League university awarded Isaac Asimov his bachelor's degree and his chemistry doctorate?

Columbia never made it easy for him. Its chemistry graduate programme first rejected Asimov, then let him in only on probation, after medical schools had turned him down twice.

Asimov credited which magazine editor with first spelling out the Three Laws in a 1940 conversation?

John W. Campbell insisted it was the other way round: Asimov already had the Three Laws in mind and they only needed stating. Asimov later happily called them a joint effort.

The Foundation stories first ran in the 1940s in which pulp magazine, later renamed Analog?

Astounding Science Fiction printed all eight original Foundation stories between 1942 and 1950. Its editor dropped the old name in 1960 because he thought it sounded too sensational.

Which breakaway New York fan club, which also nurtured Frederik Pohl, did Asimov join at 18?

The Futurians split from a larger New York club in 1938 because their founder wanted fandom to take a political stand. Asimov made friends there who became professional writers and editors.

What is odd about thiotimoline, the made-up chemical in Isaac Asimov's 1948 spoof journal article?

It dissolves before getting wet, by up to 1.12 seconds in the spoof. Asimov wrote it to practise dry academic prose, and his doctoral examiners signalled he had passed by quizzing him about it.

In a 1964 newspaper article, Asimov predicted life 50 years on by imagining a visit to which event?

A World's Fair was his frame because he had just toured the 1964 one in New York. He foresaw video calls, and guessed robots would exist by 2014 without being common or very good.

Asimov was a prominent member of which Sherlock Holmes society, founded in America in 1934?

The Baker Street Irregulars heard Asimov argue that Professor Moriarty's treatise on an asteroid was really about the wilful destruction of an ancient, civilised planet.

Which Nobel-winning economist says Asimov's Foundation novels first drew him to the subject?

Paul Krugman wanted to be one of the story's future scholars, who use a new science to try to save civilisation. Nothing real came close, so he settled on economics as the next best thing.

Asimov said Henry, the waiter who solves his Black Widowers mysteries, probably owed most to which fictional servant?

Jeeves, the valet created by Wodehouse, was the one borrowed model at the table, as Asimov based every other regular on a close friend of his own. Henry quietly supplies the answer after the diners have all failed.

Which actor plays the cloned emperor Brother Day in the TV series of Asimov's Foundation?

Lee Pace plays successive genetic clones of Cleon I, each reigning in his prime as Brother Day. A retired older copy, Brother Dusk, stays on as his adviser.

Which actor played Sonny, the robot suspected of murder, in the 2004 film of Asimov's I, Robot?

Alan Tudyk performed Sonny through voice and motion capture. The film began as an unrelated script called Hardwired and only later took on Asimov's title.

Which writer's unfilmed late-1970s screenplay of I, Robot did Asimov hope would be a landmark film?

Harlan Ellison was dropped from the project after insulting a studio executive he believed had not read the script. It was later serialised in Asimov's own magazine and published as a book.

Which author helped Asimov turn classic short stories, including The Ugly Little Boy, into novels?

Robert Silverberg expanded three of the stories in the early 1990s. His version of this one adds a whole second storyline about the tribe the child was taken from.

Which British rock act named its 1977 album after Asimov's robot stories, minus the title's comma?

The Alan Parsons Project dropped the comma because the screen rights to the book had already been sold to someone else. Asimov himself was enthusiastic when the band's songwriter spoke to him about the idea.

For which magazine did Asimov write 399 monthly columns, the work he said he enjoyed most?

Fantasy & Science Fiction ran his column from 1958 until his final illness. He was given complete freedom over what to write, and often strayed from the laboratory into the public debates of the day.

Which term did Asimov coin for 1940s stories that put the human condition ahead of gadgets?

Social science fiction was his label for a trend led by writers including himself and Robert A. Heinlein. His own best-known 1941 short story is often held up as the textbook example.

The Science Fiction Writers of America gave Asimov which lifetime-achievement title in 1987?

Grand Master is an honour reserved for living writers, and Asimov was the eighth to receive it. A decade later he was inducted into the genre's Hall of Fame posthumously.

Which broadcaster dramatised Asimov's Foundation trilogy as eight hour-long radio episodes in 1973?

BBC Radio 4 aired the serial weekly from May to June 1973. Listeners got a full dramatisation of the saga almost half a century before it reached the screen.

Which publisher issued Asimov's first novel in 1950 and later many of his story collections?

Doubleday took the book after its editor asked Asimov to stretch a 40,000-word story to novel length. He stayed loyal for decades and called the firm a father image.

I. Asimov, published two years after its author died and a 1995 Hugo winner, is what kind of book?

A memoir covering his whole life, it was written years ahead of schedule because he had fallen ill and feared he would not live to the date he had planned. It won the Hugo for best non-fiction book.

In Asimov's 1953 story Sally, which thinking machines are retired to a farm when they grow old?

Cars with positronic brains are the only ones allowed on the road in the story's 2057, and none needs a human driver. Sally herself is a vain convertible.

Which gift from his father at 16 helped the young Isaac Asimov start writing in earnest?

A used typewriter set the pattern for life: Asimov composed first drafts at the keyboard at 90 words a minute and retyped them just once as the final copy.

In Asimov's Little Lost Robot, what makes one robot hide among 62 identical machines?

An engineer's angry insult did it: the robot took the outburst as a literal order and vanished into a roomful of lookalikes. Susan Calvin is called in to work out which one it is.

In Asimov's robot novels, what are the rich, long-lived people of the fifty colony worlds called?

Spacers lean heavily on robot labour and keep their numbers low so that each can live in wealth and privacy. They look down on the people of an overcrowded Earth.

Which planet in Asimov's later Foundation novels joins people, animals and even rocks in one mind?

Gaia takes its name from the Gaia hypothesis and the Earth goddess. Its settlers formed a telepathic group mind that later spread to the planet's other life and then to its inorganic matter.

In Asimov's comic fantasy tales, Azazel, whose favours always go awry, is what kind of creature?

A tiny demon just two centimetres tall, Azazel is summoned by a freeloader named George. He is barred from helping George directly, so George asks favours for his friends instead.

In Asimov's story Reason, robot Cutie dismisses humans as unimportant and starts to worship what?

The power supply becomes the god of a new religion, with Cutie as its prophet and the lesser robots as disciples. The humans stop arguing once they see he does the job perfectly anyway.

Which title did Asimov want for the 1950 collection his publisher insisted on calling I, Robot?

Mind and Iron was dropped because the publisher preferred a title already taken by a 1939 story by Eando Binder, one that had greatly influenced Asimov. He objected, and was overruled.

Which mixed-up robot stars in the children's book series Asimov wrote with his wife from 1983?

Norby went on to star in eleven novels. Asimov admitted his wife did about 90 per cent of the work, and that his name was wanted on the cover to help sales.