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Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories #7
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 7: 1945
1945-a momentous year: January 9, U.S. forces invade the Philippines; February 13, Dresden firebombed; Iwo Jima falls March 16; F.D.R. dead on April 12; Hitler, April 30. And on August 6, the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, altering the fate of humanity. And most certainly altering the face of science fiction.
Stories of dramatic mutations, "outsiders," aliens, superhumans, were in high gear and the tremendous transition of the times was reflected in powerful stories by Fritz Leiber, Leigh Brackett, Fredric Brown, Lester del Rey, Henry Kuttner, A. Bertram Chandler, Isaac Asimov and more.
The world was expanding at a rapid rate, but no more quickly than the world of science fiction!
Stories of dramatic mutations, "outsiders," aliens, superhumans, were in high gear and the tremendous transition of the times was reflected in powerful stories by Fritz Leiber, Leigh Brackett, Fredric Brown, Lester del Rey, Henry Kuttner, A. Bertram Chandler, Isaac Asimov and more.
The world was expanding at a rapid rate, but no more quickly than the world of science fiction!
368 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published July 1, 1982
2 people are currently reading
124 people want to read
About the author
Isaac Asimov
2,788 books28.1k followersWorks 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...
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...
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 5, 2019
7/10. Recopilación de esos años con autores no demasiado de mi gusto. Algun buen relato pero sin más.
April 26, 2017
The best thing here: "What You Need" (along with of course "First Contact").
July 20, 2017
A collection of 14 short stories/novelettes. I like to call myself a science-fiction fan but I've honestly never read anything by most of the authors here (who are pretty famous in the world of sci-fi) so it was nice to have the chance to do so. They're all well-told stories and had me turning the pages pretty quickly. My favorite ones were "Correspondence Course" by Raymond F. Jones, "First Contact" by Murray Leinster, and "What You Need" by Henry Kuttner. There's also one that stayed with me even though I didn't really like it, which was "The Piper's Son" by Lewis Padgett (the pen name for Harry Kuttner and C. L. Moore writing together). It had interesting ideas, but I thought the authors could've more fully explored their implications.
August 4, 2025
Media finale: 3.62/5 stelle
February 28, 2023
Una buena colección de relatos clásicos que tienen el estilo de los pioneros de la ciencia ficción, autores que son los primeros que tratan los temas y no necesitan dar tantas vueltas como obras posteriores, que tienen que tratar de ser originales en cosas de las que ya se ha escrito. El conjunto es muy variado, tanto en estilo como en temática, al ser escritores muy diferentes. Puestos a hablar de un relato me quedo con el primero por suponer una curiosidad histórica: explica cómo construir una bomba atómica un año antes de la prueba de Alamogordo. Eso supuso problemas para el autor ya que la seguridad de EEUU no se sintió muy feliz al enterarse. Todo esto lo explica Asimov en la introducción que hace al relato, introducciones que merece la pena leer siempre.
January 22, 2014
È il 1945 e il secondo conflitto mondiale volge al termine. Scrittori di fantascienza tornano dal fronte; altri, esentati dall'ecatombe, continuano a scrivere come se nulla fosse; altri ancora si preparano a una fase ulteriore, la "guerra fredda", che scoppierà di lì a poco. Nessuno di loro forse immagina che la catastrofe più grande nella storia dell'umanità - stermini basati sull'appartenenza a una presunta "razza", mezzi terrificanti di massacro, armate in lotta su ogni quadrante del mondo - rilancerà la fantascienza. Genere trascurato, e tuttavia capace di descrivere, sia pure in via metaforica, grandi sistemi in lotta. Cosa che la letteratura mainstream non riesce a fare se non di rado. Il settimo volume de Le grandi storie della fantascienza, a cura di Isaac Asimov, riflette bene la transizione in corso. C'è il recupero insistito di un caposcuola della sf degli anni Venti, Murray Leinster. Generazioni hanno sognato sulle sue forse ingenue fantasie, zeppe di scienziati brillanti, di astronavi misteriose, di messaggi enigmatici provenienti dallo spazio, di energia positivista. Ma ci sono anche, molto più problematici, Fredric Brown, Lewis Padgett, Fritz Leiber e molti altri. Quasi un'antitesi a Leinster. Quale futuro luminoso, dopo una guerra che aveva imbruttito e fatto sanguinare il mondo intero?
March 19, 2015
This is the seventh volume of Asimov and Greenberg's choices of the best sf of the golden age; this is the one for 1945. The book opens and closes with classics from Fredric Brown ("The Waveries" and "Pi in the Sky"), with a dozen good ones in between by the likes of Leiber, del Rey, Kuttner, A. Bertram Chandler, etc. Murray Leinster is represented by three stories; his "First Contact" is my favorite of the book.
April 8, 2017
Of the first seven short-story collections in this series, this is my second-favorite. (#1, with stories from 1939, was my favorite.).
The stories in this collection date from 1945 and--perhaps because they were written after 6-years of World War-- many have a dark, pessimistic, and at times brutal character to them. My favorites included Kuttner and More's "The Piper's Son," Fritz Leiber's "Wanted: An Enemy," and A Bertram Chandler's "Giant Killer" (which now is among favorite sci-fi stories ever, bleak and brutal as it was). I also found Lester del Rey's "Into Thy Hands" and Henry Kuttner's "What You Need" engaging in concept, if a bit confusing in the narration-- and really enjoyed Murray Leinster's "De Profundis" and the slightly more playful (if cynical) "Pi in the Sky" by Frederic Brown.
The only read 'dud' in the collection, in my opinion was Murray Leinster's "First Contact," which did nothing for me story-wise-- despite the fact that it's considered a super-ultra-mega classic, has been voted into the SF Hall of Fame, etc. Still, from a historical point of view, I can see how it was influential on later SF developments.
The stories in this collection date from 1945 and--perhaps because they were written after 6-years of World War-- many have a dark, pessimistic, and at times brutal character to them. My favorites included Kuttner and More's "The Piper's Son," Fritz Leiber's "Wanted: An Enemy," and A Bertram Chandler's "Giant Killer" (which now is among favorite sci-fi stories ever, bleak and brutal as it was). I also found Lester del Rey's "Into Thy Hands" and Henry Kuttner's "What You Need" engaging in concept, if a bit confusing in the narration-- and really enjoyed Murray Leinster's "De Profundis" and the slightly more playful (if cynical) "Pi in the Sky" by Frederic Brown.
The only read 'dud' in the collection, in my opinion was Murray Leinster's "First Contact," which did nothing for me story-wise-- despite the fact that it's considered a super-ultra-mega classic, has been voted into the SF Hall of Fame, etc. Still, from a historical point of view, I can see how it was influential on later SF developments.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews