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The Martian Way and Other Stories

Isaac Asimov

really liked it 4.00 · Rating details · 4,301 ratings · 119 reviews

This collection of four famous science fiction tales masterfully exemplifies author Isaac Asimov's ability to create quickly a believable human milieu in the midst of alien circumstances. Each of the long stores also shows his considerable skill in fully fleshing out a speculative scientific or social possibility.

Contents:

· The Martian Way · na Galaxy Nov ’52
· Youth · nv ...more

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Hardcover, 222 pages

Published August 1st 1982 by Bentley Publishers (first published 1955)

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May 31, 2013 Manny rated it liked it

Shelves: not-the-whole-truth, science-fiction

The Genevan Way, a short story inspired by Isaac Asimov and some real events

"Oh fuck!!" wailed Not. "Our shower has no hot water again!"

"Don't worry," I said, and quickly assembled an anti-gravity device out of some spare parts we'd just acquired from a CERN friend who was moving house. Pausing only to put on my ex-NASA space suit and pack a laptop, a fondue set, some Gruyère and a bag of stale bread, I blasted off in the direction of Jupiter.

The trip was going to take a good half hour, so I pas ...more

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Nov 13, 2019 Patrick rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, classics

I can never read enough Asimov! I loved The Martian Way and the other stories were fun as well. This book has:

The Martian Way 5 stars
Youth 3 stars
The Deep 4 stars
Sucker Bait 3 stars

The Martian Way was about trying to get the colony on Mars independent from Earth. Instead of relying on water and other resources from Earth, they looked elsewhere for their resources like the Astroid Belt, the rings of Saturn, and a couple of the moons. Earth was on the brink of cutting off its water shipments bec ...more

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Apr 22, 2019 Paul Weiss rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, short-stories

Still thinking like an earthling?

Since time immemorial, Mars has always figured largely in Earth's mythology. And ever since the prolific imaginations of the likes of HG Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs first put pen to paper beginning the development of modern sci-fi as a genre, Mars, Martians, travel to Mars and life on a hostile Mars have continued to be favourite topics. With The Martian Way and Other Stories, Isaac Asimov proudly continues this hallowed tradition with a series of four stories Still thinking like an earthling?

Since time immemorial, Mars has always figured largely in Earth's mythology. And ever since the prolific imaginations of the likes of HG Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs first put pen to paper beginning the development of modern sci-fi as a genre, Mars, Martians, travel to Mars and life on a hostile Mars have continued to be favourite topics. With The Martian Way and Other Stories, Isaac Asimov proudly continues this hallowed tradition with a series of four stories written in the good doctor's unmistakable and well-loved style.

Despite its brevity, The Martian Way explores a myriad of topics including colonization of an extra-terrestrial planet, acclimation of human beings to space and space travel, the politics and economics of life on another planet and its relationship to "mother earth" and even the development of earth-side prejudices to a people that are now considered foreigners.

Youth tells the story of Slim and Red, two young boys, who have found two very strange animals. As any pair of young fellows might do, they hide the animals and feed and care for them to the best of their ability. They even dream about becoming wealthy by developing a circus act. The ending of the story discloses the surprise that the two animals are in fact the only survivors from a crashed alien spaceship (but ... and you'll have to trust me here on this one ... that is not a spoiler!) The REAL ending is a complete blind-side twist that only the likes of a twinkle-eyed fun-loving Asimov could imagine. I'll admit that the ending does seem somewhat artificial and forced but Asimov fans have long known that he loved his humour and always enjoyed tweaking his readers' noses. The joke is on us and even Asimov's silliness forces a reader to look into himself and investigate his self-centered notions of superiority.

Unfortunately, many sci-fi authors have fallen in to the trap of creating aliens that are simply humans (or humanoid, to use one of Star Trek's favourite aphorisms) with only a bizarre variation on their outward appearance. In The Deep, however, Asimov has departed from that mundane mind-set and created a technologically advanced species with telepathic abilities that lives underground on a planet with dwindling resources. Teleporting an advance scout to earth to explore the possibilities of establishing contact with us and sharing our space on earth, the species discovers that the cultural, linguistic, physical and sociological gap between humans and their species is so vast that it could never be crossed.

Sucker Bait, the longest of Isaac Asimov's novellas, deals, in a nutshell, with the potential rigors and difficulties of space travel, exploration and planetary colonization. An expedition to Troas, an earth-like planet located in orbit around a binary star system in the Messier 13 globular cluster, met with a mysterious disaster and failed to return or report back in any way. We are told the story of the follow-up expedition that was mounted to determine the fate of the original exploration. Although his tongue may have been at least partially inserted into his cheek, Asimov also uses Sucker Bait to cleverly discuss the potential pitfalls of ever continuing specialization in scientific research and the alarming and ever growing dearth of generalists and polymaths.

The back cover of the edition I read asks, "Still thinking like an earthling? Get out of your rut, open mind - there's a whole universe waiting." I've got to agree. If you enjoy science fiction, then you'll enjoy this classic collection of four short stories from perhaps the finest author the genre has ever seen. Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss ...more

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Nov 25, 2018 Manuel Alfonseca rated it liked it

ENGLISH: This collection of Asimov's stories and novellas contains 4 titles published in the fifties. The one I liked most was Sucker Bait, an interesting mystery story during space exploration, with a special and likable main character, Mark Annuncio. Another story, Youth, which seemed at first sight to be a standard story about contact with extraterrestrials, turned at the end to have a surprising twist, the same used by Richard Matheson in a chapter (The invaders) of the second series of The ...more

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Mar 13, 2012 Kat added it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy

The first story The Martian Way begs the unanswered question: what will happen to the rings of Saturn, its moons, and the planet itself as its ice rings are systematically cut away? Will its moons (especially Pandora and Prometheus, the shepherding moons whose gravitational forces are responsible for the confining, shaping, and gaps between the rings) break their orbit with Saturn to become dangerous planet-killer comets? To what degree will Saturn itself experience atmospheric or orbital change ...more

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Mar 08, 2019 Brian Clegg rated it liked it · review of another edition

A collection of three novellas and a short story from one of the recognised masters of the 'golden age' of science fiction. These 1950s stories demonstrate well both why this period was given this title back then - the quality was far higher than, say, the 1920s and 30s - and also why that gold has tarnished in quite a big way since. By Asimov standards, the characters here are slightly more three dimensional than usual, but still from the stock cupboard, while women only feature as part of the A collection of three novellas and a short story from one of the recognised masters of the 'golden age' of science fiction. These 1950s stories demonstrate well both why this period was given this title back then - the quality was far higher than, say, the 1920s and 30s - and also why that gold has tarnished in quite a big way since. By Asimov standards, the characters here are slightly more three dimensional than usual, but still from the stock cupboard, while women only feature as part of the scenery.

Still, there's some good material. The Martian Way is a bit of a precursor for Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - space colony under pressure from the dominant Earth realises that it has to find a way to be truly independent. In this case, the problem is water and the solution is recognising the wider resources available to those with mastery of space. Youth has some of the feel of a Bradbury story with young protagonists (inevitably both male) - though Asimov can't capture the same sense of wonder. But it's a classic twist-in-the-tale piece of SF, nicely done. The Deep, the short story, tries to look at human culture through alien eyes and half succeeds. And Sucker Bait involves a mission to a failed colony where Asimov does what he does best - tries to find the solution to a problem of maintaining a galactic civilisation, in this case information overload.

The idea of that last story is that people are increasingly specialised and computers don't have insight, so there's a need in a widespread society (across thousands of planets) is to somehow have the ability to cross index and analyse knowledge. Now, of course, we would turn to computers, but we can't blame Asimov for not thinking of the advances we've seen in both software and hardware - so instead he proposes a human solution, individuals programmed from birth to be in the Mnemonic Service - remembering everything they see and able to link together forgotten pieces of information. Human Googles, you might say.

Clearly this isn't a realistic solution, but at least Asimov had thought about the issue. The story still has those 1950s faults. The captain and crew of the ship are straight out of marine central casting and regard the 'egghead' scientists as weirdos. And there's a sentence that beautifully sums up the period approach to women in the description of the origin of the settlement: 'In the next months, some of the unattached men arranged to have women brought in, so the settlement must have flourished for a while.' Yet despite these faults, this is primarily a story of ideas and Asimov was exploring an issue that most tales of galactic empire simply never considered.

I wouldn't say this short book is a collection to rush out and obtain - but if you come across it, it's well worth giving it a try. ...more

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Jun 21, 2014 Richard rated it really liked it · review of another edition

It's quite fashionable to put Asimov down these days, and I don't recommend this without reservation. One doesn't read Asimov for characterization (For me, the best character he ever created was the robot detective in the "Naked Sun" and "Caves of Steel" novels), prose style, or insight about women (it's a male world in these two novelettes and two short stories). But before 1970 he was good at fashioning concise, hard science, idea-driven fiction. These are all from the early 1950's. The lean p ...more

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Oct 27, 2019 Dane Cobain rated it really liked it

This book contains four different Isaac Asimov short stories, and as with any short story collection, some of them are better than others. The good news is that it starts off well with the titular story in which a Martian colony comes to realise that the water that they rely on from the Earth might not be as secure as they thought. In fact, they have to find an alternative source of water, and it even had a couple references to what Asimov called “the hot house effect”. He was including climate ...more

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May 26, 2021 Rebecca rated it it was amazing

Something written in 1952 that still has relevance today? In science fiction? I can't believe I haven't read this before now. The paperback cost 60 cents when it came out. Not the 50s, probably the 60s when the paperback market started to flourish. All these stories got me thinking a bit more out of the box. It is just amazing that Asimov realized some things about our use and abuse of the planet so early on. ...more

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Jul 06, 2014 Denis rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: hardcover

The title story is one of the first SF stories I ever read. It was anthologized in some 50's collection lent to me by a friend. I never forgot that story. I even retold it to my stepdaughter (6 years old at the time and is in her twenties now) during a relatively long car ride. She retold it as a factual story the next day at school... She has never forgiven me for that.

The other stories in this collection are first rate Asimov. ...more

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Jul 09, 2018 Geoff rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, collection

There's only 4 stories in this collection and I wasn't impressed by any of them. I wouldn't recommend this for anyone looking to check Asimov's short story work. ...more

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Nov 22, 2020 Bill Fish rated it really liked it

Nice collection of short stories, all from the perspective of space. Only 1 of the stories seems to partially take place on Earth (in an airplane, so technically over the Earth). The Martian Way is a story about politicians on Earth refusing to provide water to the colonies on Mars because of a made up fear of Earth running out of water (despite the majority of the Earth comprising of water). Resonates today with politically made up "problems" to divide our country - for example the fear of immi ...more

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Jul 15, 2021 Horus rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

This collection of short stories is really not Asimov at his best writing. The concepts of the stories however, and how they make you think, are definitely up there. There are four shorts included in this book and they are much more about human prejudice and hubris in many ways, than they are about space travel. There are great twists of perspective in two of the stories, which invite us to check our own assumptions at the door. The first story, The Martian Way feels like it could have been an i ...more

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Jun 07, 2020 Georgy Wilband rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sco-fi-fantasy-arturian

I love Asimov's writing. He is plain talking and his stories have a lovely twisty feel to them. I can imagine him grinning to himself as he writes them out. I wish I'd discovered my love for this author years ago but never too late - I've amassed a fair collection to keep me going via ebay and I think I will start with the Robot books next! This was a collection of short stories - hmmm which one did I like the most ? Weirdly I started with the second story - it drew me in and it was very very cl ...more

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Aug 24, 2021 Kathy rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction-fantasy, 2021

Collection of short stories, most very dated, but youth was interesting.

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Apr 21, 2010 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Science Fiction Fans

Shelves: science-fiction, fiction, short-stories

Isaac Asimov is one of my favorite science fiction authors. Some of his novels and story collections I've ranked five stars as simply amazing. Not in style or characterizations--but in ideas. Asimov's style I'd call decent--workmanlike. It's well-crafted but you don't linger over the prose as this thing of beauty. Asimov can (rarely) pull at the heartstrings (try reading the short story "The Ugly Little Boy") and at times he can create, if not complex, then memorable characters. (Such as "the Mu ...more

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Mar 16, 2018 Neville Ridley-smith rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: owned, asimov, scifi

What's interesting about some of Asimov's stories is how current and real they sometimes feel.

Except for the fact there's no women and a few other anachronisms (eg devices with dials and gauges instead of screens), the last story, Sucker Bait could easily have been written yesterday. It's got good science, a mystery, it's set a long time in the future, and a nice resolution. It's also got great characterisation - the socially inept savant, the perceptive guy in charge of him, the scientists, som ...more

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Feb 14, 2021 Jason rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, short-stories

Isaac Asimov was a master of the science-fiction short story. The Martian Way and Other Stories is a collection of four of them, all about life on other planets that make statements about human nature and our perceptions of reality. While they may not be his most famous tales, or even some of his better ones, they are still good and this collection is a worthwhile way to spend your time reading.

The titular piece, “The Martian Way”, tells the story of some astronauts from Mars, the main charact Isaac Asimov was a master of the science-fiction short story. The Martian Way and Other Stories is a collection of four of them, all about life on other planets that make statements about human nature and our perceptions of reality. While they may not be his most famous tales, or even some of his better ones, they are still good and this collection is a worthwhile way to spend your time reading.

The titular piece, “The Martian Way”, tells the story of some astronauts from Mars, the main characters being Swenson, Long and Rioz. Their job is to salvage abandoned hulls from rockets launched from Earth, and repurposing them for use where they live. Their home is in the future when Mars has been colonized without being entirely self-sufficient. Their main problem is a water shortage and this valuable commodity must be shipped from Earth for their survival. The political problem is that on Earth a populist demagogue is running for public office and he is whipping up a storm of anger by saying that Earth is running out of water and the people on Mars no longer deserve it because they are stealing the space junk left floating in the universe by astronauts who abandoned it. Swemson, Long , and Rioz hatch a plan to make a dangerous trip to Saturn in order to haul a chunk of ice from its rings so that they no longer need help from Earth to sustain their colony.

“The Martian Way” is a simple, problem-solving space opera that relies heavily on description and action to move the plot along. While it has a basic crisis/resolution plot and structure, it is the sensation and imagery that fill in the sparse outline and make it complete. The descriptions of spacewalking and the space ship’s approach to Saturn and its rings are vivid and clear. But in the end, it is really just a heroes’ journey type narrative, the kind that Hollywood movies have been recycling for the past century.

“The Martian Way’ is the least pedantic of the four stories. “Youth”, the second story, is more moral in its intent. Two young boys are keeping two smaller creatures in a cage; they plan on showing them off at the circus. Meanwhile their fathers are waiting to have a business meeting with two men from another planet who have arrived in peace, searching for resources to take back home. So it is easy to see where this is going already. But that shouldn’t detract from the story too much because Asimov lays out the pieces of this narrative puzzle in a way that makes the complete picture come together gradually with a fair amount of suspense. It is a very structured and logical story.

I won’t give away the ending here but I will say that this story was the weakest one in this collection. The ending did not work well primarily because as a reader I formed a mental picture of all the characters at the beginning of the story but at the end I learned that my mental picture was wrong. So Asimov doesn’t pull this gimmicky ending off well but, then again, you could say it is a case of the journey being more important than the destination. If this story had been made as a film, or even an episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, some simple cinematic tricks could have been utilized to get around the limits of the narration but as a piece of writing it just doesn’t work right in the end.

In “The Deep”, a mother is traveling in an airplane with her infant son. During the flight, a being from another planet invades the baby’s body for an exploratory mission in search of knowledge regarding human nature and the type of planet that Earth really is. While possessing the child’s mind, the alien being finds human consciousness to be both primitive and impossible to fully comprehend. The human ego poses an obstacle to its comprehension and even things like the climate and terrain of Earth are off-putting to this alien. While this being has a low opinion of humans, the point is not that it is really so superior; in fact, this being might be suffering from hubris. In its own way, it is the same as humans who think of themselves as being superior to all other life forms. The reality of the situation is that these two contrasting types of creatures have both adapted to their environments in their own respective ways. Asimov, in this story, is posing a question regarding evolutionary biology and human consciousness. Just because the alien and the human have adapted to their environments in different ways, does that really mean that one type of creature is superior to the other? Is the concept of natural hierarchy simply an illusion? Asimov was a progressive thinker, an anti-racist and a vegetarian, so you might be able to deduce where he is going with this.

The final story, “Sucker Bait”, is really the strongest of the four. A group of scientists, all specialists in a variety of fields, are sent to a distant planet to find out why a colony of humans died out there. The central character is Mark Annuncio who is described as a Mnemonist, a special breed of humans who are able to memorize infinite amounts of information with complete accuracy. This socially awkward character has one advantage over computers and that is the capacity for intuition. He also contrasts with the other specialists because, on one hand, they understand their respective areas of specialization, and, on the other, are completely ignorant about any other fields of knowledge. Mark Annuncio does not understand anything he memorizes but he is able to make intuitive leaps across categories that specialists are not able to comprehend. Mark Annuncio is necessary because he is able to solve problems that computers can not since such machines only respond to programmed stimuli and are unable to actually think. Each character has their own place in the bigger scheme but most of them suffer from tunnel-vision so that they can not comprehend how everything fits together. This is the nature of human intelligence and a commentary on the benefits of intellectual diversity.

Curiously enough, the humans of ordinary intelligence in this story all carry pocket-sized portable computers to help them solve problems. So Asimov, in the 1950s, appears to have predicted the invention of smart phones and the internet. What really makes this interesting, though, is Mark Annuncio’s comment that these computers are only used by stupid people who can’t think for themselves. Therefore, Asimov also appears to have predicted a dilemma of the 21st century; people use the internet to do their thinking for them and unfortunately this often means being tricked or deceived into believing in garbage like conspiracy theories, pseudo-science, intolerant extremism and all the other kinds of junk that seems to thrive and breed like bacteria in the online world. At its least offensive, the mediocre masses of humanity spend most of their social media time posting pictures of cats or what they ate for lunch. When will humanity be saved from itself?

As the story unfolds, Mark Annuncio comes into conflict with the other scientists after they land on the designated planet. In the end, the trouble he causes turns out to be an act of heroism. Once again, we are left with a happy, Hollywood movie-type ending.

Isaac Asimov was prolific and wrote tons of stories. Given the volume of his output, it would be absurd to say that all his writings are of equal literary merit. The Martian way and Other Stories does not reach the complexity or heights of grandeur that he accomplished in works like I, Robot. These certainly are not his worst stories either. For a writer whose worst stories are better than most authors’ best stories, it can be said that this collection is, at the very least, an enjoyable and thought-provoking read,

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Aug 17, 2018 Thomas rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Asimov, Isaac. The Martian Way. 1955. Signet, 1957.
This 1957 paperback with the iconic cover of astronauts spacewalking above the rings of Saturn is the first paperback science fiction book I remember purchasing off the rack in a local drugstore. Asimov has said he is proud of having introduced the idea of spacewalking into science fiction—and maybe even inspiring NASA. The title story, first published in 1952, is the one that stuck with me. An overpopulated earth is short of fresh water and it ...more

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Feb 18, 2021 Omar rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A far cry from my favorite Asimov writings, but still, and I shit you not, a steep distance ahead of most science fiction media in general. Asimov is just on another level by himself through his page turning, emotion inducing, and thought provoking storytelling.

The book has 4 short enjoyable easy stories, each of which has a drastically different mood, atmosphere and direction. But they're all very classic in essence since they were all written back in the golden era of Sci-fi; 50s and 60s.

I a ...more

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Nov 03, 2021 Storm rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi-asimov-short-stories

A Collection of 4 short stories by Asimov.

🧑🏽‍🚀🚀🧊 The Martian Way - 4⭐ - An Earth politician calls off planet colonies "Wasters" and threatens to cut off water exports. A group of Martian scavengers attempts something unprecedented to save their planet.

👦🏼🛸👽 Youth - 3⭐ - An astronomer visits an industrialist to tell him of the possibility of opening interstellar trade with an alien world whose industry has collapsed due to war.

🤰🏼🤱🏻👶🏼 The Deep - 3⭐ - An explorer sent above to find a new home for hi ...more

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Aug 05, 2019 M00se Gurl rated it really liked it

The first three short stories; the martian way, youth and the deep were very entertaining and thought churning. The endings to them seemed to hit you like the realization of backing away from a picture, seeing it in its entirety and it was almost an opposite of what you thought it was in the first place.

They gave a whole different angle to the story I had finished and surprisingly I was able to look at the whole telling in a new way. The last story, Smucker bait... Was a more lengthy story fill ...more

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Jan 03, 2021 Oliver rated it liked it

Honestly I'm a bit disappointed. I liked the first short story, The Martian way but a deeper look at this and other stories annoyed me. There were too many sudden mcguffins or science out of the arse moments or attempts at parables about harm of science advancement or forgetting the past or overuse of something like nuclear power and so on. The pacing in many stories was a bit poor, with a good establishing shot (as it were) and then boom the end or you can see where the story is going too early ...more

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Apr 22, 2018 James rated it it was amazing

Though not quite as exotic as some of his other short story collections, Isaac Asimov's The Martian Way is still a fun and interesting read.

It has four stories, the titular one involving Mars colonists taking a big risk to secure water. Youth is about if extraterrestrials visit a planet, The Deep is arguably the most bizarre of the group and involves an underground civilisation, and finally Sucker Bait is a lengthy but interesting look at a expedition visiting a planet.

Asimov's combined talent ...more

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Apr 24, 2020 Jean Dupenloup rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction-classics

I am a gigantic Asimov nerd but I have to say this particular book was not my favorite.

The stories are all fine and well told, but I just couldn’t get into them the way I usually do. Not sure why.

Perhaps I am setting the bar a bit too high? After all, every single one of his 440 books cannot be of the same quality as I, Robot or the Foundation cycle.

Still, a worthy read from which I wouldn’t dissuade anyone.

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Sep 26, 2017 Saskia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

I loved how they talked about earth clearly not understanding what is so beautiful about nature (how would they know? they only know space and empty planets) and loved what the character of Hilder can teach us (politics is too much about emotion, too less about facts and moving a lot of people works by showing them what to be frustrated about).

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Oct 05, 2018 Becky rated it it was amazing

It’s easy to forget just how innovative Asimov was. Yes The Martian Way is clearly dated in terms of gender roles but the ideas themselves are fascinating and the political play at the end still rings true today. Youth also has a wonderful twist to it and The Deep is one of the few stories I’ve read that tries to imagine a truly alien way of thinking.

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Jan 09, 2019 Neil rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Sometime in the future a human Martian colony struggles to cope with political changes on Earth. We follow the Scavengers, and then watch their world get turned upside down. Faced with the rise of a Trumpian politician on Earth, drastic action is required.
It is plain to see why Asimov is one of the greats.

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Jan 23, 2019 Tom Howell rated it it was amazing

The reading becomes a little stilted as it is divided into separate stories - I found myself drawing parallels or connections between the separate stories which may not have been there. Certainly an interesting and poignant assessment of humanity and human nature. Glimmers of hope mixed in with catastrophe.

A good choice if you're time constrained and need to be brought back down to earth. ...more

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Jul 10, 2017 Rakshith Kunchum rated it really liked it

Shelves: ebooks-i-own

All of them are good and worth reading once. Not a must read for casual science fiction readers. Ardent asimov fans like me who earnestly crave for science fiction short stories that entices, will enjoy this book and shouldn't miss it. ...more

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About Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov

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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 one of the most prolific writers 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 o 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 one of the most prolific writers 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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Isaac Asimov. (2007, November 29). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 21:50, November 29, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As... ...more