The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.
Early life
Asimov's parents were Anna Rachel and Judah Asimov, a family of Russian-Jewish millers. He was named Isaac after his mother's father, Isaac Berman. Asimov wrote of his father, "My father, for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart", noting that "he didn't recite the myriad prayers prescribed for every action, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me"
Education
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age five, including Boys High School in Brooklyn.Graduating at 15, he attended the City College of New York for several days before accepting a scholarship at Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then, the institution's primary undergraduate school for men.
Personal life
Asimov met his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman ( 1917, Toronto, Canada – 1990, Boston, U.S.), on a blind date and married her on July the same year. The couple lived in an apartment in West Philadelphia while Asimov was employed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (where two of his co-workers were L. Sprague de Camp and Robert A. Heinlein). They had two children, David and Robyn Joan . In 1970, they separated and Asimov moved back to New York.
Illness and death
In 1977, Asimov suffered a heart attack. In December 1983, he had triple bypass surgery at NYU Medical Center, during which he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion.When his HIV status was understood, his physicians warned that if he publicized it, the anti-AIDS prejudice would likely extend to his family members. He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated.
Forward the Foundation continues the chronicles of the life of Hari Seldon, first begun in Prelude to Foundation. The story takes place on Trantor, and begins eight years after the events of Prelude to Foundation. It depicts how Seldon develops his theory of psychohistory from hypothetical concept to practical application, and its application in the Seldon plan.
In the twenty-second century Earth obtains limitless, free energy from a source science little understands: an exchange between Earth and a parallel universe, using a process devised by the aliens. But even free energy has a price. The transference process itself will eventually lead to the destruction of the Earth's Sun--and of Earth itself.
Robot Visions is a collection of science fiction short stories and factual essays by Isaac Asimov. Many of the stories are reprinted from other Asimov collections, particularly I, Robot and The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories. It also includes the title story, "Robot Visions" which combines Asimov's motifs of robots and of time travel. It is the companion book to Robot Dreams.
The novel is set in an era in which interstellar travel is in the process of being discovered and perfected. In Chapter 2, the novel states that the year 2220 was 16 years ago. Accordingly, the bulk of the novel takes place in or around the year 2236. Before the novel's opening, "hyper-assistance", a technology allowing travel at a little slower than the speed of light, is used to move a reclusive space station colony called Rotor from the vicinity of Earth to the newly discovered red dwarf Nemesis. There, it takes up orbit around the semi-habitable moon Erythro, named for the red light that falls on it.
Foundation is a cycle of five interrelated short stories, first published as a single book by Gnome Press in 1951. Collectively they tell the early story of the Foundation, an institute founded by psychohistorian Hari Seldon to preserve the best of galactic civilization after the collapse of the Galactic Empire.
A faction of Spacers have come to the realization that Spacer culture is effete, stagnating due to negative population growth and longevity. Their solution is to encourage further space exploration and colonization by Earthmen in concert with robots. However, Earthmen would first need to overcome their irrational antagonism toward robots. To this end, they have established habitations on Earth through which they hope to introduce humanoid robots to Earth.
In the late 1930s a new young talent began to make his mark on the science fiction scene with a succession of outstanding stories in the various SF magazines of the time. His name: Isaac Asimov. He was later to become world-renowned as the author of such classics of modern science fiction as the epic FOUNDATION trilogy and the robot stories in which he formulated the now famous Three Laws of Robotics.
The Earthman Elijah Baley has died nearly two centuries earlier. During these two centuries, Earth-people have overcome their agoraphobia and resumed space colonization, using faster-than-light drive to reach distant planets beyond the earlier "Spacer" worlds. Their inhabitants, calling themselves "Settlers" rather than "Spacers", revere Earth as their mother-world.