When I wrote about Isaac Asimov’s story “The Ugly Little Boy”, I mentioned that Asimov had never even acknowledged the existence of the short film that was made of it and that I therefore suspected that he didn’t hold a very high opinion of it. Well, I’ve been going through my collection of Isaac Asimov's Science … Continue reading All the Troubles of the World
Asimov
Are you an enemy of religion?
In 1988 Isaac Asimov sat down for a lengthy interview with Bill Moyers. Inevitably, the subject got around to religion. Read the transcript or watch the video clip. Or read along as you watch. The transcript has been lightly edited. Bill Moyers: Are you an enemy of religion? Isaac Asimov: No, I'm not. I feel, … Continue reading Are you an enemy of religion?
A Bad Jew?
In 1979 James Gunn interviewed Isaac Asimov in preparation for a book Gunn was writing on Asimov’s work. At one point the conversation turned to Asimov’e views on Judaism. I don't consider myself a particularly virtuous person, but I like to think I have some virtues, of which loyalty is one. But possibly it is … Continue reading A Bad Jew?
Unto the Fourth Generation
It was difficult choosing a story by Asimov where he incorporated religion because he really didn’t do it very much, but I wanted to do a trilogy of the Big Three and contrast the way they approached religion in their stories. So even though “The Last Question” can only tangentially be considered to deal with … Continue reading Unto the Fourth Generation
The Last Question
And so we come to the third of the Big Three, but of course, Isaac Asimov is always number one in my book. In the 1950s when Isaac Asimov began writing a series of stories about a computer that he called Multivac, a sort of super-computer descended from Univac, he wrote what could very well … Continue reading The Last Question
The Ugly Little Boy
I must have read Isaac Asimov’s short story “The Ugly Little Boy” back when I was in high school, and I wasn’t terribly impressed with it. Most likely I read it as the last story in his collection Nine Tomorrows, and I may have just been rushing to get to the end and not really paying … Continue reading The Ugly Little Boy
Engine
As I was reading Asimov’s New Guide to Science, I came across this passage: The first person to translate this idea into a practical working device, however, was an English military engineer named Thomas Savery. His steam engine (the word engine originally denoted any ingenious device and comes from the same Greek root as ingenious) could … Continue reading Engine
Of Kites and Chlorine
I’ve previously written about attending the lecture that Isaac Asimov gave at the Schwab Auditorium at Penn State, but all I could do was say that it was sometime in April 1970. Now I’ve come across not only the Centre Daily Times archives, but also the archives of the campus newspaper, The Daily Collegian. So … Continue reading Of Kites and Chlorine
A Yard of String
Galaxy magazine had a monthly science column written by Willy Ley. Ley was born in Germany in 1906 but fled that county in the mid-1930s and settled in the US. When Isaac Asimov was the toastmaster at a science fiction convention and Willy Ley was in the audience, he spent some time making Willy Ley … Continue reading A Yard of String
The Caves of Steel
So the word is coming down that there might be a movie version of Isaac Asimov’s novel The Caves of Steel. I would probably have been excited to hear that, say, oh, maybe 40 years ago, when there was a chance, a slim one, but still a chance, that there might be a reasonably faithful adaptation … Continue reading The Caves of Steel