50 Fun Facts About Isaac Asimov

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

He was offered the associate professorship at the School of Medicine after a postdoctoral year, largely thanks to a fan letter about his story Nightfall from a faculty member.

In which country was Asimov born?

His exact birth date in the village of Petrovichi is unknown; he celebrated January 2, 1920. The family sailed to New York via Liverpool when he was three.

What kind of business did Asimov's parents run in Brooklyn, where he discovered pulp magazines?

The shops sold newspapers and magazines, giving him an endless supply of free reading. He became a science fiction fan in 1929 at age nine.

Roughly how many books did Asimov write or edit in his lifetime?

He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. He used an outline only once, likening it to playing the piano in a straitjacket.

Asimov's books span every Dewey Decimal class except which one?

He covered the other nine, from Bible guides to limericks to the history of the slide rule. His works on religion include the two-volume Asimov's Guide to the Bible.

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

He assumed it was the natural analogue of 'mechanics' and 'hydraulics'. The OED also credits him with 'positronic' and 'psychohistory'.

Which 1942 short story was the first to list all Three Laws together?

It appeared in Astounding Science Fiction and was collected in I, Robot in 1950. Robbie, from 1940, was his first positronic-robot story.

According to the First Law, a robot may not injure a human being or, through what, allow one to come to harm?

Asimov said he added the clause because of Arthur Hugh Clough's satirical lines 'Thou shalt not kill, but needst not strive / officiously to keep alive'.

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

It puts humanity as a whole above any individual human, and was needed once his robots were quietly running whole civilisations.

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

It treats human masses statistically, like gas molecules. Seldon foresees a 30,000-year dark age and plots to shrink it to a thousand.

Which historical work inspired the premise of the Foundation series?

Asimov said the idea came to him spontaneously on the way to meet editor John W. Campbell, who helped shape the Galactic Empire's collapse.

How long a dark age does Seldon predict will follow the Galactic Empire's fall, before his plan?

The Seldon Plan cannot stop the collapse, only deflect events 'just a little' so the interregnum lasts a mere thousand years.

The original Foundation trilogy won a one-off Hugo Award in 1966 for what?

It beat Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, among others. Asimov had assumed Tolkien would win and was stunned.

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

Fan pressure pushed him back to the series. Foundation and Earth followed in 1986, then two prequels, ending with Forward the Foundation in 1992.

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

The ten-episode straight-to-series order was announced in August 2018. In the first five books Seldon appears in the flesh only once.

Which 1941 story was voted the best science fiction short story of all time by the SFWA in 1964?

It was only his 32nd story, written after Campbell discussed an Emerson quotation about the stars with him. Robert Silverberg expanded it into a novel in 1990.

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

Generations of humans ask the computer Multivac how to reverse entropy. Its answer, finally, creates a universe.

What is the name of the giant computer that appears in several Asimov stories, including his favourite?

The name extrapolated 1950s machines like UNIVAC into a single centrally managed global computer.

Susan Calvin, the recurring character of the robot stories, holds what job at US Robots?

US Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. is the fictional dominant robot maker of the 21st century. Calvin is the sharp centre of Liar! and Evidence.

Asimov's collection I, Robot was published in which year?

The title had already been used by Eando Binder for a 1939 story. The 2004 Will Smith film was built on an unrelated script called Hardwired.

The 2004 film I, Robot starring Will Smith was originally based on a script with what title?

Jeff Vintar's screenplay had Asimov's ideas grafted on after the studio acquired the title. Harlan Ellison had written a faithful I, Robot screenplay in 1977 that was never filmed.

Detective Elijah Baley and robot R. Daneel Olivaw were introduced in which 1954 novel?

They became Asimov's favourite protagonists. Daneel turns out to survive for tens of thousands of years, linking the Robot and Foundation universes.

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

Its title comes from Schiller: 'Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.' The middle section features genuinely alien aliens, a rarity for Asimov.

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

The novelette won both the Hugo and Nebula in 1977. Asimov and Robert Silverberg expanded it into the novel The Positronic Man.

Asimov wrote the novelisation of which 1966 film, which was released before the movie itself?

He called the script full of plot holes and got permission to fix them. Because the book came out six months early, many assumed the film was based on it.

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

Doubleday published six of them in the 1950s. He dropped the disguise after a planned TV deal fell through and started slipping in his Three Laws.

Asimov's first novel, Pebble in the Sky, was published by Doubleday in which year?

Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin went on to publish about 60 percent of his work up to 1969; he said both represented 'a father image'.

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

Astounding's John W. Campbell had rejected his earlier efforts but became his mentor. The first story Campbell bought appeared in 1939.

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

Under the jokey Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue, Asimov had to call Clarke the best SF writer and Clarke had to call Asimov the best science writer.

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

Each reserved second-best in the other's category for himself. Clarke's dedication in Report on Planet Three honoured the pact.

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

Two of his co-workers at the Naval Air Experimental Station were fellow SF writers Robert Heinlein and L. Sprague de Camp.

How many times did Asimov, who was afraid of flying, travel by aeroplane in his life?

Once for his Navy work and once home from Hawaii in 1946. He was also a claustrophile who enjoyed small enclosed spaces and wrote in a windowless room.

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

He was a close friend of Gene Roddenberry. The Next Generation's Data has a 'positronic brain', which one episode called 'Asimov's dream'.

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

The infection was kept secret on his doctors' advice and only disclosed by his widow Janet a decade after his death in 1992.

In what year did Isaac Asimov die?

He died in Manhattan on April 6 of heart and kidney failure, complications of the HIV he had contracted nine years earlier. His final Foundation novel appeared the same year.

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.

Asimov was a reluctant honorary vice president of which high-IQ society?

He described some members as 'brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs' and drifted in and out of membership.

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.

Which Honda humanoid robot is named in Asimov's honour?

Honda's official line is that the name stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility. An asteroid, a Mars crater and a Brooklyn school also carry his name.

Asimov's Guide to the Bible covered the Old Testament in 1967 and the New Testament in which year?

The two volumes were combined into a single 1,300-page book in 1981. He wrote a similar guide to Shakespeare.

What did Columbia College require Asimov to do before granting him an honorary doctorate?

It satisfied the college's swimming requirement. He had finished his bachelor's degree at Columbia in 1939 after Seth Low Junior College closed.

The science fiction magazine bearing Asimov's name was launched in which year?

Davis Publications started it as a quarterly with his consent. It passed 100,000 circulation within a year and went monthly soon after.

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

Its time-travelling Eternals quietly tweak reality to minimise human suffering, at the cost of space travel. Asimov later tied it loosely to the Foundation universe.

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

The essays ran in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His reference work The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science had been a National Book Award nominee in 1960.

Why did Asimov's father spell the family name with an S when they arrived in 1923?

The name had to be rendered in the Latin alphabet when the family arrived in 1923. Asimov pronounced it 'AZ-i-mov' all his life.

At what age did the self-taught Asimov learn to read?

He then taught his younger sister so she could skip straight into second grade. His mother lied about his birthday to get him into first grade a year early.

In 1986 the SFWA named Asimov its Grand Master. He was which number in the sequence?

Heinlein had been the first in 1975. The award was presented to Asimov at the 1987 Nebula banquet.

How soon after divorcing Gertrude did Asimov marry his second wife, psychiatrist Janet Jeppson?

The wedding was on November 30, 1973. Janet, also a science fiction writer, co-wrote the Norby robot books with him and edited his condensed autobiography.

What did Asimov believe would be his most enduring contributions?

The Three Laws reshaped how other writers handled machines, and the Foundation books invented a whole fictional science. He got his wish.

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

It was awarded a Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1940 at the 2016 Worldcon, 76 years after publication.