Starships: Stories Beyond the Boundaries of the Universe

by Isaac Asimov (Editor), Charles G. Waugh (Editor)

Short stories deal with captain, crew, passengers, and cargo of starships, different types of ships, contact with aliens, combat, and disaster in space

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies

348 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Works of prolific Russian-American writer Isaac Asimov include popular explanations of scientific principles, The Foundation Trilogy (1951-1953), and other volumes of fiction.

Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.

Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).

People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.

Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.

Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...

Reviews

[Ruby Hollyberry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Apart from the sexism (almost all authors men, almost all characters men, "men's men" at that, females ideal or derogatory), this 30 year old book holds up extremely well. The science fiction stories are solid and quite varied. I liked the Robert Sheckley the best and the Cordwainer Smith the least.

[Jordan Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of short stories. Only a couple stinkers in the bunch. The nice thing about these collections is that you can just skip ahead to the next story if the present one doesn’t capture your attention.

[Les · Rating 3 out of 5]

Continuing my recent trend of rereading books originally read decades ago, I selected this short story collection, ostensibly edited by Isaac Asimov, from my bookcase -- containing stories about interstellar starships from various authors from the early- to mid-twentieth century. Some of the stories have been reprinted so many times that I skipped them. Others were new to me and only a few of them really kept my attention.

All in all, it was a mediocre collection of stories that I really wanted to love. (I am a big fan of realistic stories involving interstellar travel and have even edited my own such anthology for Baen Books - Going Interstellar.) In this case, I did not fall in love. Just mild infatuation.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

mostly good