Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) was one of the most acclaimed, prolific, and influential science-fiction authors of the 20th century. Unlike many of his contemporaries, though, Asimov was also a scientist, teaching biochemistry at Boston University and writing scores of books on astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology. Not content with that breadth, Asimov also wrote extensively on key periods in Western history, and he even knocked out a few books about the Bible. Despite all that, Asimov remains mostly associated with the science-fiction genre. Like his contemporary Ray Bradbury, his first short stories were published in pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories. Asimov's first novel, Pebble in the Sky, arrived in 1950 from Doubleday. The same year, several of Asimov's short stories that had originally appeared in pulp magazines were collected into I, Robot, which was published by Gnome Press. The following year, Gnome did the same thing for the first book in what would become a trilogy of Foundation titles, released from 1951 to 1953. For Asimov, I, Robot and Foundation, each built from short stories, would become his defining works. I, Robot was especially influential and remains so today because of its three laws of robotics, itself a term invented by Asimov in a story from 1941 called "Liar!," which was of course included in I, Robot. The three laws are: "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 it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law." "A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law." For generations, this benign design for robots, in which they are entirely subservient to humans, gave societies comfort about what awaited them in the future. In recent years, though, as robotics has merged with advances in artificial intelligence, it is not clear that Asimov's laws will survive the reality of market-driven technology. Indeed, through 21st-century eyes, Asimov's laws seem laudable but perhaps naive. Foundation is less well known than I, Robot, which was made into numerous television shows and a 2004 film starring Will Smith, but it is more honored. Marrying Asimov's interest in futuristic space societies and civilizations in Earth such as the Roman Empire, Foundation received a special one-time Hugo Award for Best All-Times Series. By the early 1980s, Isaac Asimov, with his professorial mutton-chop sideburns, was well known enough to land a lucrative gig as a pitchman for RadioShack's Tandy TRS-80 Model II microcomputer.