Gold Quotes

“I tell you it's deadly when you start thinking your wife might be right.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth, it is To have a thankless child!”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“I got the word right away. You always get the word. Wherever you are, even on the Moon or in a space settlement, bad news gets to you in seconds. Good news you might miss out on, but bad news never.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“they say faith can move mountains, and I guess it did in this case.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“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.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“In the first place, we started in the early days of science fiction—not only the Big Three, but others of importance such as Lester del Rey, Poul Anderson, Fred Pohl, Clifford Simak, Ray Bradbury, and even some who died young: Stanley Weinbaum, Henry Kuttner, and Cyril Kornbluth, for instance. In those early days, the magazines paid only one cent a word or less, and there were only magazines. There were no hardcover science fiction publishers, no paperbacks, no Hollywood to speak of.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“On numerous occasions, I have been asked if I “believe” in UFOs. My usual answer is, “I assume that by UFO you mean ‘unidentified flying objects.’ I certainly believe that many people have seen objects in the air or sky that they can’t identify, and those are UFOs. But then, many people can’t identify the planet Venus, or a mirage. If you are asking me whether I believe that some mysterious object reported is a spaceship manned by extraterrestrial beings, then I must say I am very skeptical. But that, you see, is an identified flying object, and that’s not what you’re asking about, is it?”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“The British science fiction writer Herbert George Wells proceeded to make use of the notion and, in 1898, published The War of the Worlds, the first significant tale of the invasion and attempted conquest of Earth by more advanced intelligences from another world (in this case, Mars). I have always thought that Wells, in addition to wanting to write an exciting story with an unprecedented plot, was also bitterly satirizing Europe. At the time he wrote, Europeans (the British, particularly) had just completed dividing up Africa without any regard for the people living there. Why not show the British how it would feel to have advanced intelligences treat them as callously as they were treating the Africans?”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“And now there came a struggle between John Campbell and myself. John could not help but feel that people of northwest European descent (like himself) were in the fore-front of human civilization and that all other people lagged behind. Expanding this view to a galactic scale, he viewed Earthmen as the “northwest Europeans” of the galaxy. He did not like to see Earthmen lose out to aliens, or to have Earthmen pictured as in any way inferior. Even if Earthmen were behind technologically, they should win anyway because they invariably were smarter, or braver, or had a superior sense of humor, or something. I, however, was not of northwest European stock, and, as a matter of fact (this was 1940, remember, and the Nazis were in the process of wiping out the European Jews), I was no great admirer of them. I felt that Earthmen, if they symbolized these northwest Europeans according to the Campbellian outlook, might well prove inferior in many vital ways to other civilized races; that Earthmen might lose out to the aliens; that they might even deserve to lose out. However, John Campbell won out. He was a charismatic and overwhelming person, and I was barely twenty years old, very much in awe of him, and very anxious to sell stories to him. So I gave in, adjusted the story to suit his prejudices and have been ashamed of that ever since.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“Campbell urged me to make my ideas as to the robot safeguards explicit rather than implicit, and I did this in my fourth robot story, “Runaround,” which appeared in the March 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. In that issue, on page 100, in the first column, about one-third of the way down (I just happen to remember) one of my characters says to another, “Now, look, let’s start with the Three Fundamental Rules of Robotics.” This, as it turned out, was the very first known use of the word “robotics” in print, a word that is the now-accepted and widely used term for the science and technology of the construction, maintenance, and use of robots. The Oxford English Dictionary, in the 3rd Supplementary Volume, gives me credit for the invention of the word. I did not know I was inventing the word, of course. In my youthful innocence, I thought that was the word and hadn’t the faintest notion it had never been used before.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“Leslie F. Stone.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“A. R. Long”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“Adventures in Time and Space,”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“(Before the Golden Age,”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“Harlan Ellison”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“Orson Scott Card”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“Pebble in the Sky,”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“Clifford D. Simak.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“Poul Anderson.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“Frederik Pohl.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“Fritz Leiber.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“L. Sprague de Camp.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“Jack Williamson.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“The Great Shaver Mystery.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection