Back in July, I wrote about the first of the science-fiction “Big 3″ (Arthur C. Clarke). As I noted then, I primarily chose to begin with Clarke due to his having authored a short story, The Nine Billion Names of God. I don’t really have any reason to go with Asimov next other than it seems like a good time to cover him.


Isaac Asimov

While Clarke was influential for his contribution to movies as well as space exploration, Asimov has not had much of his work do well on screen. While the movie I, Robot Is “suggested” by Asimov’s stories, it takes an approach that is the opposite of the direction Asimov took in his stories and books. In the movie, I, Robot there is a robot uprising while in Asimov’s Robot worlds, he coined the “Three Laws of Robotiocs:”


He later added a Law Zero:


Asimov’s wiki:



I am most familiar with three of Asimov’s sci-fi series; the aforementioned Robots, The Galactic Empire, and Foundation. I especially enjoyed how in his later Foundation books, he tied everything together.

Paul Krugman has stated that the original Foundation series and Asimov’s concept of psychohistory that inspired him to become an economist.

Asimov was a prolific writer and ranged far beyond science-fiction:


Think of that for a moment. And even if he did not publish officially in the Dewey Decimal category of “philosophy,” can anyone doubt that he had a philosophical impact through his writings?

Asimov died in 1992:

When he died in New York City on April 6, 1992, his brother Stanley reported heart and kidney failure as the cause of death.[39] He was survived by his second wife, Janet, and his children from his first marriage. Ten years after his death, Janet Asimov’s edition of Asimov’s autobiography, It’s Been a Good Life, revealed that the myocardial and renal complications were the result of an infection by HIV, which he had contracted from a blood transfusion received during his bypass operation.[40] Janet Asimov wrote in the epilogue of It’s Been a Good Life that Asimov’s doctors advised him against going public, warning that the anti-AIDS prejudice would likely extend to his family members. Asimov’s family considered disclosing his condition just after his death, but the controversy that erupted the same year when Arthur Ashe announced his own HIV infection (also contracted from a blood transfusion during heart surgery) convinced them otherwise. Ten years later, after most of Asimov’s doctors had died, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public.[41

Picture from telli gacitua licensed under Creative Commons