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Gold

3.92 of 5 stars 3.92 · rating details · 1,298 ratings · 55 reviews

Gold is the final and crowning achievement of the fifty-year career of science fiction's transcendent genius, the world-famous author who defined the field of science fiction for its practitioners, its millions of readers, and the world at large.

The first section contains stories that range from the humorous to the profound, at the heart of which is the title story, "Gold

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Published (first published January 1st 1996)

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Mar 13, 2011 Peter added it

Great, but not quite what I was expecting...: This is the first book by Isaac Asimov that I have ever read. I suppose it was a bit stupid to start with the last one. I think it's really good, although the writing is 'simpler' than I expected it to be. I thought it would be more complicated, but I think the fact that it is written in a simple way is good, as it does not detract from the actual stories, and makes it lighter reading. I will definitely be looking out for other books. i had heard his...more

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Feb 11, 2012 Bryan Murdock rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was my second attempt at "checking out" an e-book from the Salt Lake County library system. I wasn't sure it was going to work, so I just picked the first book I saw from an author that I know I like (with an intro from Orson Scott Card too!). It worked, and it turns out, I still really do like Isaac Asimov. Gold is a collection of short stories and essays.

These stories are not his best, yet some of them still made me sit and say, "hmmm," for a while after reading them, and at least one cau...more This was my second attempt at "checking out" an e-book from the Salt Lake County library system. I wasn't sure it was going to work, so I just picked the first book I saw from an author that I know I like (with an intro from Orson Scott Card too!). It worked, and it turns out, I still really do like Isaac Asimov. Gold is a collection of short stories and essays.

These stories are not his best, yet some of them still made me sit and say, "hmmm," for a while after reading them, and at least one caught me off guard with a clever and inspiring biblical allusion. Those were great. I also enjoyed the one where he poked fun at his own writing style.

The essays were really hit and miss (and that's how I read them too, skipping around trying to find the ones that were most interesting). Seems like they would appeal more to an aspiring writer that was making a serious study of the craft. Sometimes I think, maybe, it would be fun to try and write a real story, but I'm not that serious about it. So I only found these mildly interesting. There was, however, one essay, called Dialog, that was really good. Asimov's stories are all dialog driven, and you could tell he enjoyed this topic. You really should read the whole essay, but here's an excerpt from it that I don't want to forget:

"For the last few decades, however, it has become permissible to use all the vulgarisms freely and many writers have availed themselves of the new freedom to lend an air of further realism to their dialog. What's more, they are apt to resent bitterly any suggestion that this habit be modified or that some nonvulgar expression be substituted.

"In fact, one sees a curious reversal now. A writer must withstand a certain criticism if he does /not/ make use of said vulgarisms.

"Once when I read a series of letters by science fiction writers in which such terms were used freely and frequently, I wrote a response that made what seemed to me to be an obvious point. In it, I said something like this:

'Ordinary people, who are not well educated and who lack a large working vocabulary, are limited in their ability to lend force to their statements. In their search for force, they must therefore make use of vulgarisms which serve, through their shock value, but which, through overuse, quickly lose whatever force they have, so that the purpose of the use is defeated.

'Writers, on the other hand, have (it is to be presumed) the full and magnificent vocabulary of the English language at their disposal. They can say anything they want with whatever intensity of invective they require in a thousand different ways without ever once deviating from full respectability of utterance. They have, therefore, no need to trespass upon the usages of the ignorant and forlorn, and to steal their tattered expressions as substitudes of the language of Shakespeare and Milton.'

"All I got for my pains were a few comments to the effect that there must be something seriously wrong with me.

...as a matter of quixotic principle, I try to avoid expletives, even mild ones, when I can."

You tell 'em, Ike.
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Jan 31, 2010 Hope rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

On the one hand, I very much enjoy Dr. Asimov's stories. All of the fiction in this volume was new to me, and a joy to read. That made up about 30% of the book.

A collection of essays, mostly introductions to anthologies and editorials from his magazine, filled the remaining 2/3 of the volume. They were sorted into two sections - On SF and On Writing SF, but there was no context given for any of them, nor were they in any particular order in each section. Many of the essays lost a lot from not b...more

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Apr 18, 2012 Hollowman rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: enhanced-reading, diy-super-ebook

The book is divided into three parts (see below).

I pretty much skipped over PART ONE.

Parts TWO and THREE are the ... uh ... "GOLD" parts, IMO. In fact, this may be my single favorite Asimov book because of these two sections. If you're a writer -- scifi or otherwise -- it may be worth reading these sections ... perhaps a bit like "picking the brain" of one of the best-known scifi authors of all time.

I've never been a big Asimov fan. But after reading about his creative/thought process in GOLD,...more

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Apr 30, 2013 Alberto Guerras rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Me ha gustado volverme a encontrar con el inconfundible estilo y sentido del humor de Asimov.

Esta antología reúne relatos inédito de Asimov en español, en su mayoría se trata de relatos muy breves, de menos de diez páginas, y algunos de ellos bastante olvidables.

A destacar los relatos que abren y cierran la recopilación:

"Cal" es el primer relato y trata sobre un robot que quiere ser escritor. Muestra la evolución que experimenta en su camino de lograr su ansiada meta. Es un relato que me ha arra...more

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Jul 27, 2011 Sparrow rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I LOVE this man :D I can't help but be inspired to write whenever I read him (and the list of what I've read is growing very quickly).

Every time I read a new book, I feel like I have a new favorite robot character... and I think I have to say that again. Cal is the BEST. But its so hard when I have to decide between him, Daneel, Giskard, Speedy, Cutie, and all the other greats :D And Elvex! But seriously... as an aspiring author, Cal has to be my personal hero among robots. He's so.. endearing....more

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Mar 29, 2010 Maria rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Quotes:
Q. And what are your present projects, Isaac?
A. Well, Doubleday has informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I am condemned to write one novel after another for life, and that I am not permitted to consider dying.
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Ordinary people, who are not well educated and who lack a large working vocabulary, are limited in their ability to lend force to their statements. In their search for force, they must therefore make use of vulgarisms which serve, through their shock...more

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Jan 20, 2013 Trevor rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1000-b4-40, collections-shorts, collections-essays, i-own, e-books

This collection really impressed me. I didn't know really what to expect from this book. I haven't read a lot of Asimov, but I count him among my favorite authors because whenever I read his work I'm always impressed; so I was excited for this. And it delivered.

The collection starts off with a group of Asimov's short stories. No surprises here; they all were worth reading. My favorite story has to be "Cal", the first story in the collection. It's about a robot named Cal who works for a writer. H...more This collection really impressed me. I didn't know really what to expect from this book. I haven't read a lot of Asimov, but I count him among my favorite authors because whenever I read his work I'm always impressed; so I was excited for this. And it delivered.

The collection starts off with a group of Asimov's short stories. No surprises here; they all were worth reading. My favorite story has to be "Cal", the first story in the collection. It's about a robot named Cal who works for a writer. He discovers inside himself an urge to write, but when he uses his master's writer all he can turn out is gibberish! So his master decides to put a larger vocabulary in Cal and the knowledge of how to use the writer. Now Cal can write stories and the story follows him as he develops further skills (by having them programmed into him) and what the resulting stories that Cal writes are. This whole story was really cool to me and it got me thinking. I love robots and robot stories and there's no doubt that Asimov was the master at this.
"Kid Brother" is the next story that I especially liked. It was another one of those thinking stories, and it also had a robot in it.
If I had to pick a least favorite story it would be "Gold", the title story. It was good, but it just didn't live up to the rest, in my opinion. I didn't really get it. But I did enjoy reading it.

Next there's a bunch of essays by Asimov. Some of them are from the beginnings of anthologies he edited. These were amazing. I loved reading his views on different subgenres of science fiction, for example there is an essay on space travel, on alien invasion, on dystopias and utopias, and of course on robots. The essay "Robot Chronicles" was my favorite of this section. It was fantastic. Asimov outlined which of his robot stories he viewed as contributing the most to the idea of robots. I loved this list and it gave me an idea of what Asimov viewed as his best robot stories. Another favorite essay from this section was "Nowhere!" which was the one about dystopias and utopias.

The last part is a group of essays about the art of writing science fiction, so there's one about dialogue and one about plot, etc. These were nothing special but I did appreciate the look inside Asimov's work and ideas. I don't have a favorite of this section, I liked all of them.

I definitely recommend this collection to a fan of Asimov. Even if you've only read a few books by him, if you enjoyed those reads you'll like this one!(less)

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Mar 03, 2013 Diego González rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ciencia-ficcion, relatos

Publicada en castellano como "Adiós a la Tierra y otros relatos" por la editorial Albemut.

Colección de relatos presentada como "la cumbre de la narrativa de Asimov", habría sido mucho más justo con el lector un lema como "Los cuentos que el propio Asimov no quiso publicar en vida por considerarlos indignos y que sus herederos hab publicado para hacer un poco de caja". No hay ninguno que se salve, ni siquiera el de "Oro", que da título a la edición en inglés. Sosos, planos, y carentes de chispa,...more

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Jul 09, 2008 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Over half of this book is made up of essays on science fiction and writing, although this isn't indicated on the cover of my edition. The essays are taken from Asimov's magazine and introductions he wrote for anthologies. They seem to be filler added to bulk up the book to a respectable size. Still, I enjoyed some of them. One of them confirmed my hypothesis that when Asimov wrote his early stories he had not had much interaction with young women.

The stories themselves aren't bad. I didn't like...more Over half of this book is made up of essays on science fiction and writing, although this isn't indicated on the cover of my edition. The essays are taken from Asimov's magazine and introductions he wrote for anthologies. They seem to be filler added to bulk up the book to a respectable size. Still, I enjoyed some of them. One of them confirmed my hypothesis that when Asimov wrote his early stories he had not had much interaction with young women.

The stories themselves aren't bad. I didn't like the title story, though. My understanding is that it was written in response to criticism that Asimov did not or could not write visual descriptions. With this story he failed to prove critics wrong, because it contains little or no visual descriptions in the normal sense, but only a list of things that the viewer is supposed to get an "impression" of while watching.

There's another bizarre bit about the title story that I just have to mention. Maybe it would be considered a slight spoiler, so if you care, stop reading. The director is offered a hundred thousand globo-dollars to direct Three in One. He at first is offended and thinks that this is a bribe. ?? How is offering pay for work a bribe? He seems to have received pay for his last "compu-drama." Anyway, the director goes on to claim that that amount isn't even enough to do one scene, considers it a pitiful amount, and refuses. But then the petitioner reveals that he will not just pay electronically, but will give the director actual physical gold.

"It would be my own money and I am entitled to draw it in gold," he explains.

The director is thrilled at this idea and agrees to do it.

There are so many levels where this makes no sense. To ease into it... who the heck really cares if the money is in gold or just electronic? And how did the guy know the director would care? But what's really weird is: Why couldn't the director just convert his own money to gold? He is filthy rich. Or just take the original offer and convert it to gold himself? The book strongly implies that anybody can get his own money in gold (why wouldn't he be able to?). But for some reason this guy's offer of what the director considers a small amount is thrilling because it is in gold.

This is the kind of thing you sometimes encounter with Asimov. Stuff that just doesn't make sense. It gives me the impression he just banged out these stories without taking the time to think through all of the ideas or to revise afterward. Which, in fact, is exactly what he did, according to one of the essays in this book. (less)

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Oct 06, 2011 Cheryl in CC NV rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I wanted more than the first third to be fiction - but the essays about SF were interesting, too. If you managed to go all your life reading only the Foundation trilogy, or haven't read any Asimov, this would be an ok introduction. But really, if you aren't familiar with the Master, I haven't anything to say to you. And if you are, you probably already own this. I keep about 1% of the books I read, but 90% of the Asimov, including this. Oh, and my 15 yo son says that this is amazing.

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Dec 30, 2009 Jack rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am an Asimov fan - back in the 60s, 70s, 80s I picked up his SF books, subscribe to his SF magazine, read many of his non-fiction books. Then he stopped writing and I stopped reading.
This book looked like it would be great - a series of short stories which have never appeared in 'book form' and a series of essays about the craft of writing SF.
Well I was disappointed in his SF stories, which is sad.
However, I was delighted and entertained by his essays. They were well worth the price of the boo...more

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Oct 29, 2011 Michael Hirsch rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Asimov's final collection of short stories and essays from his dotage. Pointless stories, mildly interesting essays. I really should go back and read some of his early books and stories again, because I used to like him. Either he got really bad in his old age, or my tastes changed a lot. I wonder which it is. Whichever it is, I was not able to finish reading this. I read maybe 5 stories and essays, then put it down.

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May 15, 2013 Sayantan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The book is divided into 3 parts, 1st a few short stories, the next 2 parts, essays on SF and much more.

The stories are ...meh...uh... I just can't bring myself to disparage asimov's writings. Admittedly some of them are good, but on the whole... meh

But the "gold" in Gold are the essays. Engaging, witty and insightful. A must read, especially for asimov fans and budding SF writers.

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Oct 12, 2011 N. Anderson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The first third is SF short stories by Asimov, the rest is essays about SF. I found the stories to be interesting. The essays were equally interesting, and brought up and discussed some very good points. Both were clever, funny, and, of course, all in Asimov's particular style. I could not imagine any better, or find anything to criticize. And I love to find things to criticize. :)

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Sep 29, 2010 Lydia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone who loves different kinds of science fiction or just wants a really good story.

Shelves: classics, sci-fi, anthologies

this book changed my views on science fiction way back in middle school. it is truly a masterpiece anthology of great work. my favorite is the second story in about a robot who teaches himself human values and it toys with the idea of A.I. advancement. it's my favorite short story of all time! and this is coming from the girl who is OBSESSED with the short stories of Edgar Allen Poe!

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Apr 08, 2013 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fantastic book! While I'm sure these short stories and essays are eagerly gobbled up by dedicated Asimov fans, I would like to point out that this is the first Asimov I have read, and I too was totally spellbound.

Reading this has really made me wonder why, being a pretty big SF fan, I hadn't gotten around to reading his works before. I assure you, I will be remedying that very soon!

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Jun 11, 2011 Eeepi rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Collection consisting of several short stories of varied quality, and many editorials written for other books. Some short stories are nice, and so are some editorials (especially if you like to read something about the author himself), but once again, this is not a book worth reading more than once.

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Aug 24, 2012 Austin Miller rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I thought it was a really good book. I liked Asimov's Foundation series but I think he excels at writing short stories. It also includes musings from Asimov himself which are interesting/insightful.

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Feb 27, 2013 Josh Meares rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Asimov's essays are interesting. He was an interesting, thoughtful man. But the short stories fall far beneath his usual standard of excellence. I got bored and quit reading this book.

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Jul 19, 2012 Juliana Es rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, isaac-asimov, ebook

I really like it. Asimov non-fiction writing style really appeals to me. The same can't be said for the fictional stories, though. They are okay, but not as good as I, Robot, methinks.

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Jun 02, 2011 Falbs rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"People always love themselves best. But in a world so interconnected that harm to one is harm to all, the best way of loving one's self is to love everyone else, too."

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Sep 25, 2012 Sarah P rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I didn't expect the last 2/3 of the book to be essays. Whomp whomp. The short stories were great! I didn't really like "Gold," though.

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Nov 29, 2011 Wes rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Very Good. I enjoyed the short stories, and I particularly enjoyed the insights into how Asimov thinks, and writing tips by him about how, what, and when to write, as well as ideas for stories.

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Dec 10, 2011 Brice B. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The writing advice and thoughts on science fiction were great while the short stories were forgettable.

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Jul 07, 2010 Dad rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Good stuff from the Master, I've read most of this before but it is still fun to wrap myself up in him.

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Mar 29, 2010 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Asimov is not only a brilliant short-story writer but also a funny, insightful and down-to-earth essayist.

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Jan 22, 2011 Rohit Amonkar rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Asimov is a brilliant writer. I can only awe at his imagination (which he had so many years back)

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Sep 15, 2011 Keef Baker rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Some of Asimovs last work, and more interesingly, some of his thoughts on writing. Inspirational.

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Apr 13, 2011 Jonathan Edmondson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a strange book. Supposedly all of these short stories are previously unpublished, yet barring the first, I know all the ones I have read :/ Not a bad selection of stories by the SF master, but then I am slightly biased.

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About Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov was a Russian-born, American author, a professor of biochemistry, and a highly successful writer, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books.

Professor Asimov is generally considered the most prolific writer of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. He has works published in nine of the te...more Isaac Asimov was a Russian-born, American author, a professor of biochemistry, and a highly successful writer, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books.

Professor Asimov is generally considered the most prolific writer of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. He has works published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System (lacking only an entry in the 100s category of Philosophy).

Asimov is widely considered a master of the science-fiction genre and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, was considered one of the "Big Three" science-fiction writers during his lifetime. Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation Series; his other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series, both of which he later tied into the same fictional universe as the Foundation Series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those pioneered by Robert A. Heinlein and previously produced by Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson. He penned numerous short stories, among them "Nightfall", which in 1964 was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America the best short science fiction story of all time, a title many still honor. He also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as a great amount of nonfiction. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French.

Most of Asimov's popularized science books explain scientific concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. He often provides nationalities, birth dates, and death dates for the scientists he mentions, as well as etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Examples include his Guide to Science, the three volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery.

Asimov was a long-time member and Vice President of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs" He took more joy in being president of the American Humanist Association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, a Brooklyn, NY elementary school, and two different Isaac Asimov Awards are named in his honor.

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